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The outdoors provides an ideal, but not exclusive
setting, for experiential learning. This isolation of the wilderness
ensures a closed system, without outside support, in which solutions to
problems and the achievement of goals must come from the participants.
In the eyes of participants, this involves physical, emotional, social,
and psychological survival. Responsibility for success and failure,
on the surface, rests with the participant. This is a perception
that must be maintained. The instructor, however, is like a beaver
busily tunneling underneath the surface, and carefully arranging and
reorganizing a developmental series of experiences which, ideally, should
ensure optimal personal development for each individual.
The instructor is given physical resources such as
gear, clothing, and food. There are environmental resources such as
water, trees, rocks, and sunlight. Then there are the personal resources
of the individuals in the group, and the instructor’s skill and knowledge.
Plus there is a program of expeditionary activities with a great deal of
scope for instructor innovation and facilitation technique. With
these ingredients, there are many, many possibilities for the type of
experience that the participants will report at the end of the program.
This is evidenced by research studies which show that outdoor education
experiences produce a remarkable variety of outcomes from highly
effective, to ineffective, to downright destructive. A key element
which determines the outcome is undoubtedly the instructor.
This ‘behind-the-scenes’ role of the instructor
involves constructing educational situations in which there is a ‘tension’
for learning. This tension can often be seen as a challenge between
a task and a self-perception. For example, between the task of
abseiling over a cliff and the self-perception of low confidence. It
is this tension, this state of unknowing, of discomfort, which can be seen
as the nexus of personal development through experiential learning.
The challenge for instructors is to be able to manage
the experiential tension in participants so that positive outcomes are
achieved. This is not easy and ineffective or even negative outcomes
are distinct possibilities. For example, inexperienced instructors
may lose their focus on creating and managing this educational tension,
and instead be seduced by acting (often unconsciously) to focus attention
on themselves and receiving ego-enhancement.
A valuable factor which helps in the creation and
management of educational tension is that instructors immerse themselves
in the outdoor education experience with participants. This is
important for many reasons, including:
-
gaining the respect of participants and
avoiding being perceived as having power through authority
-
developing an understanding of
participants by being alongside them, rather than ‘looking in from the
outside’
-
focusing participants on themselves as
opposed to the differences between themselves and the instructor
-
allowing the instructor to construct
experiences non-obviously and non-directly
-
providing participants with a readily
accessible role-model
Instructors should avoid creating
participant/instructor differences where they are unnecessary and do not
have a clear rationale which somehow contributes to the participants’
experiences. The instructor who is able to slip unobtrusively into a
group of participants, as opposed to standing out and being seen as a site
of power and ego, has many advantages and leverage points for the
effective facilitation of experiential learning.
Having manoeuvred him/herself into a position
alongside the participants by living in the same conditions and exuding
warmth, respect, and so on, the instructor can construct and facilitate
experiences, focusing on the following:
-
responding not reacting
-
creating tension within the participant
not between instructor and participant
-
playing with positions, not taking
them
-
making statements to raise questions
not asking questions
-
providing feedback rather than
giving answers or directions
-
modeling not instructing
-
ensuring instructor maintains the
program for the participant. The participant does not dictate
the program.
-
using facilitation skills in
mirroring, reframing, storytelling and influencing (Handley, 1994)
(This list may well be unfamiliar and a little
confusing and this paper does not easily provide a resolution to such a
valuable tension. It is important for instructors to have their own
inner tension which arises from a goal of being effective facilitators and
the reality of still developing in that direction. Instructors’
personal motivation for developing competence and effectiveness is the
only force which can legitimately move them in that direction.)
The tension that exists for participants, and is
managed by instructors, can be understood quite simply. The
participant has a self-perception of abilities and limitations. The
outdoor education personal development experience has the potential to
shift participants towards:
It is more comfortable for participants’ abilities
and perceptions to remain as they are. Hence, there is immediately a
tension between the feedback that arrives through involvement in outdoor
education activities (which imply potential, possibility, and realism) and
the old self-perceptions (which imply static, stable and often unrealistic
perceptions). These opposing forces are the reason why outdoor
education does not automatically work. In fact, the path of least
resistance is to:
-
not seek improvement in current abilities;
-
not push the limit of current abilities to see how
far they extend, because this may involve experiencing incompetence,
embarrassment and loss of self-esteem
-
not challenge held perceptions of self.
It requires the instructor to arrange and facilitate
the outdoor education experience such that participants are motivated and
rewarded by finding a way through the tension to improving abilities and
perceptions. For participants, there is much instability involved in
acquiring new abilities and perceptions - there exists considerable force
for returning to the old stability. Hence, an instructor’s work is
never really done, because opportunities can always be created to help
participants to further develop and consolidate changes once they have
begun.
Once an instructor has developed the basic technical
and safety skills to conduct an outdoor education program, it is in this
area of programmatic and personal facilitation that his/her training
should focus on and it is where the professional obligation of the
employing organization lies.
Too often instructors seek to locate their search for
effectiveness in the context of learning how to debrief. It is
interesting that in a field which has prided itself since its beginning on
experiential learning, that many outdoor educators in the 1980’s and
1990’s have turned almost about face to look for the key to learning in
debriefing. Experienced practitioners know there is an
overestimation by inexperienced instructors of the importance of
debriefing. While debriefing can certainly play an important role in
experiential learning, it is a fallacy that is always necessary or that
effective learning can’t occur without debriefing. An appropriate
metaphor is that debriefing represents the tip of the iceberg.
Nine-tenths of the iceberg, which is the learning that occurred during the
experience, occurs out of sight, underneath the water, often
unconsciously. Perhaps one-tenth of the learning occurs consciously
and out of the water, when people may sit around to talk about it.
There are even sound arguments for when debriefing can interfere with the
learning process. The point here is not to delegitimize debriefing
but to argue that attempts to improve instructor effectiveness should be
more holistic than learning to debrief. With such an approach,
debriefing will naturally find an appropriate place.
Guided discovery learning is more fundamental and
holistic than debriefing. The key to guiding this learning is for
instructors to create situations in which participants will experience an
appropriate tension which can be managed in a developmental direction.
Once the process has been begun, the instructor’s job is to monitor that
the experiential tension is moving each the participant in a positive
direction. If not, he/she must alter the experience for the
participant in some way. The skills and awareness necessary for
guided discovery learning are often subtle, but critical.
Summary
In summary, the beginning point for effective
instruction in outdoor education must be to get the best possible
potential instructors to work for the organization (i.e., instructors with
the qualities of warmth, enthusiasm, mature ego-identity, creativity,
sensitivity, practical intelligence, etc.). Then there is the
importance of knowledge training, through external programs such tertiary
level education in a related field, as well as relevant training in
technical and safety skills. Instructors are then in a position to
receive further training in instructional techniques and to develop
themselves through field experiences. Understanding one’s
assumptions and exploring other, possibly more useful, assumptions is also
a vital aspect of an instructor’s ongoing development. Ultimately,
however, the aim of all this training is not for the instructor – what
really counts at the end of the day is the quality of the experiences of
participants, which should be rigorously evaluated. Whether
participants’ learning will be optimal often critically depends on
instructors’ management of the experiential tension between
self-perceptions and challenging experiences.
Question
In the light of the discussion of orientation and
methods in this paper, keep a diary of educational assumptions, decisions,
actions, and consequences for a program you instruct. Based on this,
write a critique of your instructional style.
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Note: This version was written in 1997.
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