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Enhancing Personal Effectiveness:

The Impacts of Outdoor Education Programs

Chapter 1: Introduction

James Neill
Last updated:
March 31, 2003
 

The purpose of this study is to further the understanding of how outdoor education programs can be used to help humans develop important psychosocial skills.  At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the human race is facing a challenging situation which can be seen as the culmination of approximately 11, 000 years of experimentation in mass human civilization[1].  The pace of change[2] in just about everything keeps accelerating (Gleik, 1999) and people are faced with growing physical, psychological[3], social[4], environmental[5], and political demands.

Whilst human beings may currently be seen as ill-adapted to their situation, the species has an impressive record of developing ways to adapt and thrive in spite of, or because of, chaos and challenge.  The balance between human destruction and thriving now seems poised on the fulcrum of the twenty-first century.  As Gene Phillips (1975) put it, "we are semi-civilized, capable of cooperation and affection, but needing some sort of transfiguration into a higher form of life".  More recently, Ken Wilber (1981, p. 328) has put it this way: "at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem".

The interest of the current thesis lies in investigating a practical, educational experiment for the development of human beings -- outdoor education.  Outdoor education programs typically involve intensive experiences in small groups over several days or weeks as participants undertake progressively demanding adventure-based activities under the guidance of instructors who are usually trained in both outdoor and facilitation skills. A variety of outdoor education programs have been developed, with relatively little standardization between programs.  With the ongoing diversification of outdoor education programs, it remains extremely difficult to determine which types of outdoor education programs and methods are the most effective for which types of participants and for which types of outcomes.  Addressing this issue is a major focus of the current study.

Outdoor education has become well-known since the development of the first Outward Bound school during the second world war (1941) and was given a significant boost during the 1960s with the growing interest in psychological and educational  ways to foster psychological growth.  Outdoor education also draws, philosophically, from the development of the progressive education movement on the 1920s and 1930s as championed by Dewey (1938/1997), which is today more commonly referred to as the field of experiential education.  Over the past couple of decades, schools have increasingly turned to "alternative" character-building methods in addition to academic curriculum.  Wilber (2000) has stated:

What I find so encouraging about this is that all of us—all of us teachers and students of enlightenment—are at this time in history involved in a truly grand experiment.  Never have all of the world's "growth technologies" been fully available to a single culture: we have access not only to all of the forms of Western psychotherapy and human potential techniques, we have access to virtually all of the world's great wisdom traditions as well.  And we are all now engaged in this "simple yet complex" experiment in how best to balance all of these approaches.

Such a grand experiment may be taking place, but it remains unclear how to organize and understand the theory and research.  Hattie, J. M. (1992) conducted a meta-analysis of psychological and educational programs which aimed to enhance self-concept.  Self-concept, along with constructs such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy, has been the most commonly measured outcome of personal change programs. 

Hattie, J. M. (1992, pp. 222-223) created a continuum of program methods, ranging from cognitive (cognitive-behavioral, behavioral, personal development, communication skills) to affective (Adlerian, client-centered, Gestalt, self-awareness).  In between cognitive and affective they included programs which used a mixture of techniques (e.g., Outward Bound programs), or no particular psychological methods (e.g., environmental programs).

A small to moderate average effect size of .37 (sd = .12) was obtained from 485 effect sizes, drawn from 89 coded studies (Hattie, J. M., 1992). This finding was similar to effect sizes for other types of educational and psychological interventions, though perhaps not as great as proponents of self-enhancement programs tend to claim.  Overall, the key moderators of self-concept outcomes were:

  • source of study (18.4%; higher quality and more accessible studies reported larger effects),

  • instructor (13.4%; therapists and group leaders more effective than teachers),

  • socioeconomic level (12.2%; lower socioeconomic participants reported greater changes),

  • age (6.9%),

  • treatment (5.9%; cognitive and other types of programs were more effective than affective programs),

  • child versus adult test (4.4%; tests for adults showed greater changes),

  • general versus specific dimensions (.9%; global measures showed greater change, particularly with adults), and

  • previously diagnosed problems (.7%; previously diagnosed participants had greater change). 

In all 16 subcategories of programs (except Adlerian), there was some amount of positive self-concept change, although the validity of small changes is questionable because there was an effect size of .12 reported for control groups, possibly due to the Hawthorne effect, maturation, test-retest effects, or experimenter bias.  It was also noted in analyzing further breakdowns of results, camps and summer schools had a very high effect size (.97).

From a programming point of view, Hattie’s meta-analysis, would encourage the use of off-site programming lead by therapists or group leaders.  Program designers should consider an emphasis on either cognitive techniques and/or incorporating other techniques such as being physically- or adventure-based. 

In six subsequent meta-analyses (Bunting & Donley, 2002; Cason & Gillis, 1994; Hans, 1997, 2000; Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997; Marsh, 1999; Staunton, in progress) outdoor education and related program outcome research has been examined more closely.  Overall, effect sizes range between approximately .3 and .4 have been found, consistent with the overall self-concept change effects reported by Hattie, J. M. (1992).  Outward Bound research studies emerged from the largest meta-analysis (Hattie, et al., 1997) as being the most effective, with adult-age participants and longer programs emerging as two other major moderators.

Several important methodological limitations, however, have dogged much of the past empirical outdoor education research.  In particular, many studies have suffered from:

  • over reliance on one-group, pre-post designs;

  • lack of investigation of possible causal, or process, variables

  • use of outcome measures which are not psychometrically sound and/or not indicative of the program goals or effects;

  • tending to have low power (Hattie, et al, 1997);

  • and being overly reliant on inferential statistics and not reporting effect sizes. 

Thus, there is a need for well designed research in outdoor education examining its impact on the psychosocial competence of participants.  Whilst experimental studies are desirable, they are often not feasible, and hence large, quasi-experimental studies are often more realistic.  In this way naturally occurring variations between programs, groups and individuals can be coded and their effect studied.  A large-scale, longitudinal, comparative study would fill a valuable niche in the outdoor education literature.  It is important for such studies to use a well-developed tool which is relevant to the goals of outdoor education programs, thus this reports on the development of the Life Effectiveness Questionnaire.  In reporting, it is important to move beyond the limitations associated with significant testing.  With useful benchmarks now available from education, psychology, and outdoor education, new empirical research studies can make meaningful comparisons with data drawn from thousands of previous studies.  In all, this study offers a significant contribution to the outdoor education research literature and to literature which seeks ways of helping human beings adapt effectively to the challenges of the twenty-first century and beyond.

[1] The name given to the last 11,000 years of the earth's history is the Holocene period, the beginning of which is marked as the end of the last major glacial epoch, or "ice age”.  Another name for the Holocene period is the Anthropogene period, the "Age of Man" because this period has witnessed all of humanity's recorded history and the rise and fall of all its civilizations.

[2] The difficulties humans are facing in adapting to modern society have been observed and commented on by many, for a long time.  For example, Jean Jacque Rousseau’s famous statement that “man is born free, but everywhere is in chains” (1763*) was in response to his observation that “obstacles to human preservation” were becoming greater than each individual could cope with.  * http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/reading/core4-05r10.htm).  In the twentieth century,  Dewey (1918/2002 – add ref http://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/dewey/) wrote that “many persons have pointed out the strain which has come upon human nature in the change from a state of animal savagery to present civilization”.  Although there has been much comment about the challenges faced by human society previously, it does seem that  the intensification of the changes during the twentieth century has continued to accelerate at an alarming rate (Gleik, 1999) and thus the need to respond seems more urgent than ever before.

[3] [Mental health problems] For example, rates of depression and anxiety, the two disorders which account for approximately 50% of all mental health disorders (Seligman, *), have substantially increased in their prevalence rates over the last 50 to 100 years.  For depression prevalence trends see Fombonne, 1998; Joyce, Oakley-Browne, Wells, Bushnell, & Hornblow, 1990; Klerman, 1985; Klerman & Weissman, 1989; Lavori, et al., 1987.  For anxiety prevalence trends see Twenge, 2000).  It also appears that the average age of onset for depression is occurring earlier (Joyce, et al., 1990; Klerman, 1985; Klerman & Weissman, 1989; Lavori, et al., 1987).  It also interesting to note that suicide accounts for approximately half of all violent deaths, with suicide rates highest in high-income societies (World Health Organization, 2001).

[4] [Social problems] Examples of significant social problems are increasing rates of unemployment, violence and crime.  The global unemployment rate is now as high as ever at approximately 30% (International Labor Organization, 1996) and is expected to remain a major long-term problem with adverse social effects (World Health Organization, 1994) and although the most recent trends in the unemployment rates are improving, there remain deep problems (International Labor Organization, 2001).  With regard to violence and crime, there have been clear increasing trends in Australia over the past 20 years (Weatherburn, 2002).  In the United States, there are some divergent views about violence and crime rates.  According to Blumstein (2000), there have not been any consistent trends up or down over the past 40 years.  However, the American Psychological Association (n. d.) claims that people mistakenly believe that violence in the United States is on the downswing because crime overall has decreased since the early 1980s.  Much of this decrease, it seems, is attributable to the aging of the baby boom generation and consequent reduction in the numbers of teenagers, the demographic group that contributes disproportionately to crime rates.  Thus, according to the American Psychological Association (n. d.), violent crime continues to be on the up in the United States, especially among juveniles, and this trend seems likely to continue (American Psychological Association, n. d.).  Perhaps what is more notable but also often overlooked, is that the United States, an “exemplar” developed country, has homicide rates approximately 20 times greater than in most other industrialized countries (Shannon, n. d.).

[5] [Environmental problems] For example global warming attributable to human activity, rate of usage of non-renewable resources which is 20% in excess of what is sustainable (*ref WWF report http://www.worldrevolution.org/), ongoing destruction of natural habits resulting in increasing numbers of endangered and extinct plant and animal species