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