Resilience & Outdoor Education

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Resilience OutdoorEducation

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What is Resilience?
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What is Resilience?

• Barns burnt down
• Now I can see the moon -
  Masahide

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What is Resilience?

• I ask not for good health, but for an alert and
  discerning mind.
• I ask not that things go my way, but that I have
  perseverance and courage.
• I ask not for less responsibility, but for
  increased strength.
• - Master Cheng Yen, Tzu Chi

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What is Resilience?

• Ifyou can keep your head about you when all
  losing theirs
• - Rudyard Kipling

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What is Resilience?

• Capacity to withstand stressors

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What is Resilience?
Ability to bounce-back recover from almost
anything
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What is Resilience?
Tendency to see problems as opportunities.
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What is Resilience?
Psychological fitness
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What is Resilience?
Broadcomfort zone Flexibleframe of
reference
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The Human Story(or What Has Happened in the 1 to
2 million Years?)
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Somebody has said that man is the missing link
between primitive apes and civilized human
beings We are semi-civilized, capable of
cooperation and affection, but needing some sort
of transfiguration into a higher form of life. -
Stanley Kubrick
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7th Generation Decision Making
We are looking ahead, as is one of the first
mandates given to us as chiefs, to make sure
that every decision we make relates to the
welfare well-being of the 7th generation to
come, that is the basis by which we make
decisions in council.  We consider Will this be
to the benefit of the seventh generation?  This
is a guideline.
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What Has Happened in the last 150
Years?ZEITGEIST-gt PSYGEIST
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Industrialized Culture
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What has really changed?
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What has really changed?
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What has really changed?
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What has really changed?
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What has really changed?
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Transportation

• In 1900 there were 8,000 cars and 144 miles of
  paved road in the USA.

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Eating Exercising

• We are eating 750 calories per day less than in
  the 1970s but we are burning 800 fewer calories
  per day.

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Sedentary Lifestyle

• Television occupies about 40 of the free time of
  American adults.

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Obesity

• In the last 20 years there has been 2.5 fold
  increase in the rates of obesity in
  industrialized countries.

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Recent British research has found that children
are increasingly playing indoors.
Playing Outside is Under Threat
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6 Declines of Modern Youth(Dr. Kurt Hahn, 1930s)

• Fitness
• Initiative enterprise
• Memory imagination
• Skill care
• Self discipline
• Compassion

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Industrialized Youth

• 75 students 25 unemployed
• Issues of concern
• Mental Health
• Physical Fitness
• Purpose and Hope
• Job Skills

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Can Resilience be Trained?
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Ishi was sure he knew the cause of our
discontent. It stemmed from an excessive amount
of indoor time. 'It is not a man's nature to be
too much indoors.
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e.g., indigenousRites of Passage
Healthy societies create formative risk-based
educational experiences.
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Moral Equivalent of War

• William James - The Moral Equivalent of War
  (1896)

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4 Antidotes of Modern Ills(Dr. Kurt Hahn, 1930s)

• Fitness Training
• Expeditions
• Projects
• Rescue Service
• -gt Duke of Edinburgh, Outward Bound, etc.

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• What I find so encouraging about this is that all
  of usall of us teachers and students of
  enlightenmentare 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

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• Commitment in the face of challenge produces
  character.
• - John C. Maxwell

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John Dewey Father of Experiential Education

• Teacher as Midwife

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Double-Edged Sword
Kurt Hahn Outward Bound was a double-edged sword
it cut and it healed
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Coping Process

• Stressor -gt Appraisal
• Perceived Threat -gt Coping
• Coping
• Emotion-focused
• Problem-focused
• Support-focused (assisted coping)

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Challenge SupportGrowth
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Resilience can be fostered by Learning to
Handle Risk
And being supported
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Resilience Research
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Comfort Zone
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One crowded hour of glorious lifeIs worth an
age without a name." Thomas Mordant, 18th century
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Extreme Sport Research

• Brymer (2004) interviewed extreme sportspeople,
  focusing on base jumpers and big wave surfers.

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• when people are in a really happy mood a really
  nice mood where they're not gonna get upset with
  anything you know top of the day I feel great
  today imagine that was like a 2 foot aura around
  them and you could see everyone's aura a surfer
  when he gets a barrel I swear the aura would have
  to be 20 foot around him

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• And the situations I've explained to you I'd
  have to say they're 30 foot around you . That's
  how strong that aura is it will stay with you for
  as long as you care to remember it

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I have transcended that background fear of death
of the unknown and once you do that then you can
become umm more peaceful more self assured less
umm always looking for something outside of
yourself for the answer
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Outdoor Education Research Summary

• Research on 10,000 outdoor education students has
  found 3 to 4 out of 5 improve in personal
  social skills.

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PsychologicalEffects of Adventure Education
15 nochange
65 positivechange
Hattie et al1997
20 negative change
No change
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Effective Program Characteristics
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Effective Resilience Program Characteristics

• 1. Physically oriented
• 2. Use school context, but outside school
  location
• 3. Residential settings for long duration
• 4. Conducted by therapists or trained leaders
• 5. Incorporate aims of adolescents, parents
  teachers and include them as targets in the
  program

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Adventure Education TheoryHattie, et al, 1997

• Immediacy of experience
• Difficult goals
• Supportive environment
• Feedback

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Quality Adventure Education?

• Staff trained in Education and Psychology
• Longer Programs
• Unlock Readiness to Change
• Immediacy of Experience (action-consequence)
• Difficult, specific goals
• Supportive group environment
• Dollops of Feedback
• Reevaluation of Coping Processes

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Example Programs
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Use the Spectrum of Choice
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Simple Outdoor Education

• A backpack, a bit of food, and a plan
• Students can conduct their own expeditions
• Simple gear
• Solo

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Environmental Education
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Holistic Range of Challenges
Time
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Outward Bound

• Strong research and evaluation of positive
  effects
• Gave rise to other well known programs, including
  
• National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS,
• Project Adventure (PA) and
• Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB)

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Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound

• 10 principles based on Hahn
• Whole school philosophy

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Play for Peace

• Play for Peace operates in regions of conflict
  (e.g., Ireland, Guatemala, India) to bring
  children from cultures in conflict together to
  play games and laugh together

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Mittagundi Wollangara

• Outdoor schools built from scratch by students as
  part of their outdoor experience.

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Extended Stay Outdoor Education Programs
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Duke of Edinburghs Award Scheme
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Aboriginal Nature Interpretation Programs
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Conclusion
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• Given an uncertain, challenging future, students
  need to be equipped with physical psychological
  fitness
• Outdoor education - sound theory, solid evidence,
  and an adaptable format for enhancing resilience
• Trial evaluate a wider range of
  experience-based programs

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without adventure civilisation is in full
decay- Alfred Whitehead
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Adventure educators are needed to guide society
in understanding risk, safety psychological
resilience.
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"The latitude for innovation has never been
broader- if only our minds can stretch to it."-
Gary Hamel