Contextual Transfer in Adventure

Contextual Transfer

Having the ability to transfer skills is important not just in adventure but in any given situation will benefit any individual, by them using different experiences to shape new experiences, whether it be within the environment or within everyday life.

Priest and Gass (1997) state that transfer is a key concept when it comes to facilitation, it shows the transmission of learning in the outdoors to everyday life. Providing the learners with effective and useable transferable abilities will be of most importance to the facilitator when it comes to adventure education. However, some of the environments have different characteristics in terms of adventure and won’t allow a positive transfer, this could be through family life, job roles or even school.

Gass (1985) identified that there are three different types of learning transfer, specific transfer, nonspecific transfer and metaphoric transfer.

1.       Specific transfer – This refers to the learner taking the habits acquired in a previous skill and apply them to a new similar skill

2.       Nonspecific transfer – This refers to the learner generalizing the common principles of a previously learned skill from a previous experience and transfer them into the new different situation

Metaphoric transfer – This refers to the strong similarity between adventure activities and everyday skills, the key to metaphoric transfer is how closely connected the two are connected with each other  

Bacon (1983) states that for metaphoric transfer to occur there needs to be some kind of isomorphism between the situation and the real life situation, making sure that they are symbolically identical. This could flag up issues within metaphoric transfer being misunderstood by the learners, so the facilitators will have to make sure they state the correct information and give the correct feedback to the learners. Priest and Gass (1997) state that there is a link between adventure activities and everyday life experiences, this comes in the form of making that first initial step, whether it be in sky diving, the first jump or in everyday life by starting a brand new job and talking to new people.  

Ewert (1983) designed the ‘black box theory’ of adventure programming and within he stated that ‘We know something works, but we don’t know how or why’. Allison (1999) finds that there are three different categories that are there to help us clarify what we think and they involve an input -> process -> output in order to get the learners to understand what they need to be doing/know what they have done. We don’t know what or why the process works, is it the facilitator, the student, the activity or the environment? Personally I believe that it is the role of the facilitator which is the most beneficial towards the learners. Without the facilitator providing information and feedback, the leaners will not know what is going on, and not know what skills can be transferred throughout different skills and into everyday life. Priest and Gass (1997) portray 6 different styles of facilitation that are used in the adventure world till this day. These styles vary from getting the learners to learn through doing, learn though telling and learning through reflection.

Reflecting is one of the main ways that a learner can apply the metaphoric transfer into everyday life, as they are able to make sense of the experience to develop new and exciting learning skills. The facilitator will need to help and guide the learners through the situation by going over and reviewing with them so that they can transfer skills that they have just learned into different skills. By doing this is can create a better environment for the learners to progress and develop as individuals. However, the learners will have to have then want/need to learn and develop their newly learned skills from adventure and place them into everyday life, as a facilitator can’t physically do everything for the learners.  

 References

Allison, P. (1999). Post residential syndrome – Research from the ground up. Paper presented at Experiencing the Difference Conference, Brathay Hall Trust, Cumbria, UK.

Bacon, S (1983). The conscious use of metaphor in Outward Bound Denver, CO: Colorado Outward Bound School.

Ewert, A. (1983). Outdoor adventure and self-concept: A research analysis. Eugene, OR: Center of Leisure Studies, University of Oregon.

Gass, M. A. (1985). Programming the Transfer of Learning in Adventure Education. Journal of Experiential Education, 8(3), 18-24.

Priest, S., & Gass, M. A. (1997). Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming. Champaign, US: Human Kinetics. P174-187.

Self-Esteem in Adventure

Self-Esteem in Adventure

The term ‘self-esteem’ can be portrayed in many different ways due to all individuals being different to one another, which gives a great difficulty when trying to give it a singular definition. However, Fox (1990) gives a definition that ‘self-esteem is concerned with the evaluative element of self-concept where individuals formulate a judgement of their own worth’. However, Sonstroem (1989) comments that it is difficult to view the self without affect or evaluation. Self-concept is defined as ‘the individual’s belief about himself/herself, including the persons attributes and who and what the self is (Baumeister 1999)

William (1890) was one of the earliest people to define self-esteem, ‘Self-Esteem = Success/Pretensions. Which means that the level of self-esteem is the conflict between aspirations and achievements. Meaning that there is a difference is what they aspire to do and to what they currently are.

There is evidence that self-esteem and self-concept can be enhanced through participation in adventurous activities (Gibbs and Bunyan 1997 & Hattie, Marsh, Neill and Richards 1997), however, some learners will not benefit from adventure, for example, whether or not an individual has the ability to scale a mountain, whether they can or they can’t to others, to themselves they may feel like they have no physical self-worth and that there isn’t any point of trying. A lack of self-confidence to themselves will lower their self-esteem and stop them from achieving their full potential. Hattie et al., (1997) state that from their meta-analysis they found that self-esteem is the most predominant outcome through an outward bound activity, they concluded that this form of activity compared to traditional educational activities will enhance the learner’s self-esteem. On the other hand, Heatherton & Polivy (1991) state that if a facilitator doesn’t have the correct means of effective teaching in the outdoors, the learners may fall short of the goals and have a decrease in their self-esteem.

There can be low self-esteem which can cause depression within learners, however, there can also be too high self-esteem can lead to having rejected social influences and engagements.

After reading Hattie et al., (1997) paper on adventure education and outward bound, the notions they made about the measures labelled self-concept were that they are classed as cognitive appraisals, integrated across various dimensions that we attribute to ourselves. ‘Physical self-concept is typically inferred from responses to global physical scales that may confuse different physical components reflecting, for example, health, physical attractiveness, body composition, fitness, strength, and physical activity’ (Marsh, Richards, Johnson, Roche & Tremayne, 1994). Marsh et al., (1994) created a self-esteem model with different sub-sections relaying different forms of one’s global physical self-concept. I believe that this model doesn’t go into enough detail on the sub-sections, even though there are a lot of them.

After Hattie et al., (1997) stating that self-esteem being the greatest outcome from outward bound courses, it can be said that the facilitators will need to learners with caution. The facilitators will need to try and combat over-focusing on some learners when it comes to outdoor adventure as other learners will not benefit from being left out. The facilitator will need to take into consideration the comfort zones of each of the learners as one learner may find one task comfortable, yet another learner will find the task in their panic zone. The facilitators will try and manipulate the sessions in order to generate the best out of the learners, giving them the best chance to boost their self-esteem, setting achievable goals will allow learners to receive a sense of achievement. Leading on from this we have the black box model, where we have an input -> process -> output but we don’t know what causes the output, whether it be the facilitator, the sessions, the learners or even the environment.

References

Baumeister, R. F. (1999). The Self in Social Psychology. Psychology Press.

Fox, K.H. (1990). The Physical Self-Perception Profile manual. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, Office for Health Promotion.

Gibbs, C., & Bunyan, P. (1997). The Development of Self-Esteem Through the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. Horizons, 4, 23-25.

Hattie, J., Marsh, H., Neill, J., & Richards, G. (1997). Adventure Education and Outward Bound: Out-of-Class Experiences That Make a Lasting Difference. Review of Educational Research, 67((1)), 43-87.

Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and Validation of a Scale for Measuring State Self-Esteem. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 60(6), 895-909

Huitt, W. (2004). Self-Concept and Self-Esteem. Educational Psychology Interactive.

Marsh, H.W., Richards, G.E., Johnson, S., Roche, L., & Tremayne, P. (1994). Physical Self-Description Questionnaire: Psychometric properties and a multitrait-multimethod analysis of relations to existing instruments. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 16,270-305.

Experiential Education

Experiential Education

When it comes to learning there are two forms of education, traditional education in the form of a classroom setting, where information is given by the teacher in the hope that the learners will remember. The other form of education is experiential education; this is where new knowledge is learned through physically taking part in activities (Henry, 1989)

Smith (1980) state that experiential learning is based on three assumptions:

1. .       People will learn the best when they are personally involved in the activity and learning experience
2. .       The learner will have to discover new knowledge from the activity for any significant meaning to occur to them or change their behaviour
3. .       An individual’s commitment to learning is highest when they are free to set their own learning objectives and to actively pursue them  

Experiential learning is a difficult topic to understand but is summed up by Heron (1999) ‘learning by encounter, by direct acquaintance, by entering into some state of being. Actually being there face to face with the activity’ 

There are four sections to Kolb (1984) ELC, concrete experience, a new experience of a situation or a previous experience is reinterpreted. Reflective observation is where the learner will reflect upon their new experience. Abstract conceptualization is where the learner uses the reflection to generate new ideas or modify existing concepts. Active experimentation is where the learner applies what they have done to real world situations to see what results will come about.  

Kolb (1975) states that the learning cycle can begin at any one of the phases with each subsequent experience building on from the previous one. As well as this, learners can skip out phases of the ELC if they become too scared of one task, preventing them to continue with the tasks.

There are two different dimensions to Kolb (1984) ELC, perceiving and processing information. Perceiving information consists of Concrete Experience and Abstract Conceptualization, this is where new information is grasped by the learners and processing information consists of Active Experimentation and Reflective Observation, where the learners will make sense of all the information and transfer it into knowledge. Kolb (1971) found that there are four different learning styles that accompany experiential learning, Diverging, Assimilating, Converging and Accommodating.

1.       Diverging learners learn best through observation and making sense of those experiences (Feeling and watching).

2.        Assimilating learners prefer to place the information in a logical and concise form (Watching and thinking)

3.       Converging learners are problem solvers who tend to technical tasks rather than social tasks (Doing and thinking)

4.       Accommodating learners are action orientated but rely on working with others to get jobs done (Doing and feeling)

Personally I believe that the ELC will portray the notions of every child that is involved in experiential learning, even though all children will learn in different way to one-another. I personally believe that the facilitator will play a huge role within experiential learning as they will be the ones who have to make sure that the learners have the opportunity to reflect on what has happened or what is happening. Without a facilitator there a learner may carry out an activity and have no real understanding of what they have achieved and just brush it off as if nothing has happened but with the inclusion of the facilitator being there and providing an understanding for the reasoning behind what has just happened, the learners will be more likely to recall the information.

 

Allison (2003) states that the learning environment needs to be a combination of social physical and emotional aspects in the form of the student, the curriculum and the facilitator within experiential learning. Allison (2003) also states that experiential learning is placed in the centre of the student in the learning process.

Experiential education is a beneficial way of providing learners with new experiences to heighten their knowledge rather than sitting in classrooms obtaining knowledge through traditional educational methods. However, the facilitator will not be able to cater for the needs of every single learner.

When it comes to my personal involvements in experiential learning comes in the form of being a facilitator in snowboarding, I was able to observe the differences between two separate groups. One group were just told to follow me down the mountain and the other group were given different learning tasks along the way. The group that just followed me down the mountain found that they were able to do what they wanted but didn’t really learn anything and didn’t improve their abilities as they weren’t given anything to do, on the other hand the other group who were given different learning tasks to do along the way down, in the form of demonstrations and static/dynamic movements, found that they understood more of how they actually performed the skills and were then able to replicate them in future scenarios. I found that the younger the learners the more they just wanted to go and have fun, rather than to learn new skills, so it was my job as the facilitator to integrate the learning through the use of enjoyable experiences. At the end of the lessons where the learners had just followed me down the slope, they were unable to recall what had been learned as well as show me what they had remembered, whereas the group that were given learning tasks all wanted to tell me what they had learned and wanted to show me what they had remembered. They were able to recall the information more easily compared to the first group was because they had hands on experiences where they were able to feel, watch, think and do all of the learning tasks.

References

Allison, P. (2003). Key Principle: Trust, Risk and Learning. In: Wurdinger, S & Steffan.J Developing challenging course programs for schools.: Iowa: Kendall Hunt. p17-29.

Henry, J. (1989). Meaning and practice in experiential learning. In S. Weil & I. McGill (Eds.), Making sense of experiential learning: Diversity in theory and practice (pp. 25-37). Bristol, PA: Open University Press

Herron, J. (1999) The Complete Facilitators' Handbook, London: Kogan Page.

Kolb, D. A., Rubin, I. M., & McIntyre, J. 1971. Organizational psychology: An experiential approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Smith, M. K. (1980) Creators Not Consumers: Rediscovering social education, Leicester: National Association of Youth Clubs.

Comfort Zone Model

The Comfort Zone Model

Within the extract ‘Comfort Zone: Model or Metaphor?’ Brown (2008) comments the Comfort Zone Model (CZ) to find out if it’s worthy of being a model or if it’s rather a metaphor. The CZ model has relations to Piaget’s (1977) Cognitive Development theory and Festinger’s (1957) theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Piaget’s (1977) cognitive development looks at how a child develops as they grow up and how they retract and retain the information they are given. Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance tells us that individuals will have inconsistent thoughts, beliefs and attitudes and that they will interpret an experience to allow them to maintain consistency between their own beliefs.

As seen in Figure 1 there are three main fields to the CZ model, the ‘Comfort Zone, ‘Learning Zone’ and ‘Panic Zone’. The Comfort Zone is where most of us are situated, however we are unable to make or build any progressions as we can already do the activities easily. The Learning Zone is where we make those progressions, the tasks are not too hard we can’t do them and they’re not too easy that we don’t learn. The Panic Zone will not allow you to make any progressions, this is due to either, the tasks being too difficult that we have no idea how to approach them or the tasks creating a high stress situation where negative experiences arise.

Figure 1 – The Comfort Zone Model (Panicucci, 2007)

In my personal experience on my placement over in Canada, the students didn’t tend to learn if they stuck to runs they knew they could do well, it was only when they went down more difficult runs that they started to learn. You would have to gradually introduce them to harder slopes when they are ready, however, as a facilitator you wouldn’t want to throw someone who is used to going down green runs down a double diamond black run, this will place them straight into their panic zone and no learning will be achieved.

Estrellas (1996) states that the personal growth of a participant is reliant on them being placed into a stressful situation, meaning that a participant will only develop if they delve out of that comfort zone in which they are used to and out into the ‘unknown’ where they can improve.

However, Davis-Berman and Berman (2002) state that ‘by heightening the perceptions of risk in outdoor programmes, the staff may well be pushing participants beyond their ability to cope effectively and may be creating unacceptably high levels of anxiety in participants’ This can lead onto dangerous environments that the facilitators will put their participants into, causing high levels of stress and negativity within certain participants. Rather than forcing the participants out of their comfort zone, the facilitator should make the participant feel safe. As Davis-Berman and Berman (2002) also say, a participant will develop greater when they feel like they are safe and secure in their task at hand, as well as their progressions being at a gradual pace rather than a terrifying leap.

To conclude, is the Comfort Zone Model a Model or a Metaphor?

When it comes to applying the CZ model to different types of groups, as there will be many different individuals that will different comfort zones, making it difficult for the facilitator to make a structure around. The facilitator will not want to put participants into any heightened stress situations in which their anxiety levels will go through the roof and they will not want to carry out the tasks again. Brown states this next quote at the end of his paper, showing his views on the Comfort Zone Model being a model or a metaphor, ‘It is time to reposition the comfort zone model as metaphor; a metaphor to describe how we might think about learning and growth rather than a rationale for implementing dubious teaching and learning practices.’

References

Brown, M. (2008). Comfort Zone: Model or Metaphor. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 12, 3-12.

Davis-Berman, J., & Berman, D. (2002). Risk and anxiety in adventure programming. Journal of Experiential Education, 25(2), 3005-310.

Estrellas, A. (1996). The eustress paradigm: A strategy for decreasing stress in wilderness adventure programming. In K. Warren (Ed.), Women’s voices in experiential education (pp.32-44). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press.

Panicucci, J. (2007). Cornerstones of adventure education. In D. Prouty, J. Panicucci & R. Collinson (Eds.), Adventure education: Theory and applications (pp. 33-48). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought (A. Rosin, Trans.). New York; Viking Press