Adventure Education

Fun games and activities for children and young people

Linda Ritson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317311768
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

This essential guide promotes learning through activity-centred adventure experiences, providing skill development, social education and personal development for practitioners, teachers, support staff and youth groups.

This book offers advice and practical guidance on planning, setting up and running adventure education sessions with children and young people. Divided into two parts, it gives an overview of adventure education, explaining how it relates to holistic and outdoor learning and how it encourages active engagement from the learners as well as the instructors.

Adventure Education provides a toolkit of various games and activities that can be used with groups of young children, including parachute games, card and musical activities, and climbing and traversing games. This book will be essential reading for all Early Years practitioners, Primary teachers and support staff wanting to develop their skills and deliver adventure learning effectively, as well as youth groups looking to provide informal learning as well as physical opportunities.

Part I
The Theory

1
Introduction to adventure learning

Adventure learning is not just something for children or young people, but for everyone, whatever their age. But what does adventure learning mean? Put simply, it means learning through having an adventure.

So then, what is an adventure? The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘adventure’ as ‘a chance occurrence or event, an accident; to risk oneself; to venture’. Adventure learning concerns itself with the latter of these: ‘to risk oneself, to venture’. Adventure can be considered as an undertaking possibly involving danger and unknown risks. To encounter danger means to expose oneself to the possibility of injury, pain, harm or loss; unknown risk means the nature of the danger is unidentified and the extent is undetermined. So, danger relates to the size of the possible harm (which may or may not be physical) and risk is the probability of that harm happening. These two are variables, shaped by your own perceptions, which may or may not be accurate, but are very real to you. Adventure is therefore created through your mental image of what may happen to you if you try this venture and how likely it is that your envisaged consequence(s) may occur. Some people enjoy the thrill of possible harm and actively seek to maximise both danger and risk; others seek to minimise them. Most of us exist somewhere along a middle route, pushing the boundaries of our existence a certain extent every now and again, but not too much.

Adventure is a hugely broad term that does not necessarily mean swinging off a high peak in a remote mountain range or trekking through a faraway jungle, an adventure is relative to your life, where and how you exist every day. Simply stepping outside of your ‘everyday’ is an adventure, trying something new or engaging with new people; any new experience involves risking the danger of not working out, of not wanting to repeat it, which makes it an adventure.

Quite often, the way that people come to be introduced to adventurous activities is through an adventure programme, one or more structured sessions that enable them to learn how to do an activity, and perhaps getting an accreditation or qualification from it. Because of this, adventure learning is often called outdoor education, an active rather than a passive process of learning that requires active engagement from the learners as well as the instructors, linked to use of all five senses within an experience to heighten learning and its retention. There are a number of elements of which an adventure learning programme is composed:

1. Physical environment: people respond differently when they are away from their usual environment; they feel less sure of themselves, more nervous in what they are doing, making them more receptive and responsive, they become more willing to try unfamiliar things. This adds to the sense of danger and risk, but also makes their sense of achievement that much greater. When adventure learning programmes are used to tackle group behaviour issues, taking characters into unfamiliar surroundings is a great ‘leveller’, as people no longer have the same power over others or over the domain; people from closed communities such as housing estates can be ‘big fish in a small pond’ when on their own ‘turf’, but in a new environment they become as exposed as all other group members. The increased receptivity can bring transformative changes not possible when working on ‘home ground’.
2. Activities: rather than the activities themselves, it is the qualities of activities that bring about outcomes; the combination of challenge, skill acquisition and success leads to personal growth, rather than doing the activity in isolation. Challenges should be holistic and delivered in incremental stages of difficulty, so as not to overwhelm people early on but allow them to develop and learn as they proceed. While the ultimate goal is success, some failure may be positive in terms of personal and group development; anyone who finds the exercise too easy or too difficult is likely to derive little from it. Participants can learn as much from failure as from success, if they are appropriately supported to understand it. It is also important to remember that the activity becomes secondary in an adventure learning programme. It is less important that you can paddle correctly or tie a figure-of-eight knot every time; what matters is that you learn, progressively if possible, that you understand the concepts being taught and that you develop interpersonal and intrapersonal skills (that is, learning to get along with others as well as understanding yourself and how you appear to others).
3. The group: several characteristics of the group contribute to its outcomes. Size can be critical; if a group is too big, it can struggle to function well, but if it is too small then the inherent characteristics of group members may not be allowed to emerge. The gender mix and age mix of the group can play a strong role in performance, as can whether the group members come from the same place and whether they have a positive relationship away from the adventure learning session. The extent to which group members reciprocate is important, how much they work together as a group, rather than a bunch of individuals.
4. Instructors: the presentation, manner, attitude and behaviour of the instructor have a powerful influence on the way in which the group performs, interacts and achieves its goals, as the members take their lead from the instructor. If the instructor presents themself as a calm, cool character, with a sense of fun and a genuine interest in how the group performs, there will be different outcomes than if the instructor appears as a ‘tough he-man’ to whom the group members cannot relate. Empathy is critical: the extent to which the instructor can understand what the participant feels or thinks, whether the instructor can ‘stand in their shoes’.
5. The participant: each person exists with a particular background (their narrative) that defines their outlook, expectations and willingness to contribute to the group and to the adventure learning session. This influences group response and therefore performance, enhanced or diminished by existing perceptions, group relations, past experiences and instinctive response (‘first impressions’) to the instructor.

2
A brief philosophy and history

For adventure to be more than a fun and recreational activity, it must become adventure learning and, like all learning, must have a clear philosophical and theoretical basis. Philosophy relates to underlying principles forming knowledge and influencing beliefs, whereas theory categorises those principles and can be used to explain experiences; between them, philosophy and theory guide our thinking and our attitudes.

Adventure learning concerns itself with relationships. First, it is concerned with our relationships with other people (interpersonal) and with the self (intrapersonal). Intrapersonal relationships are to do with the way in which we value ourselves and with how much confidence we enter the world. Second, it is concerned with the relationships we have with nature – both ecosystemic and ekistic relationships. Ecosystemic relationships relate to the interdependence of objects, such as the food chain and the satisfaction of our needs. Ekistic relationships relate to our interactions with the natural environment and the effect each has on the other, such as deforestation, water supplies and disease. These relationships are expressed through our vision of the world and the way in which we interpret events, experiences and interactions.

How we see the world and the way in which we translate our experiences is defined by our epistemology and our ontology. Our epistemology is our individual body of knowledge and how we have acquired it; this is embedded in our personal beliefs and how we understand what we know as ‘fact’, related directly to our understanding and analysis of the world around us. This in turn is all built up from our ontology, our life experiences, understanding and feelings that are the foundation of our personality and interpretation; this comprises the basis of our reading of the events, situations, experiences and encounters of our life. The method through which we come to define our reality and understand our world is known as metaphysics; what and how we learn is embodied in the way we see and interpret our world, thus our epistemology is created through our ontology, which also provides the limitations of our knowledge and understanding. Theories of learning relevant to adventure learning are essentially of three types:

1. Behavioural: a passive mode of learning that pays no significant attention to different abilities or learning styles; the learner is directed by and dependent upon the instructor. There is a very empirical (observational), external epistemology, founded on conditioning and control by the instructor, with no recognition of independent thought or personal experience. The learner is not credited with any ability, nor are they expected to contribute to or engage with the learning.
2. Cognitive: an active mode of learning that recognises the differences in people; a greater level of rational thought, analysis and recall is credited to the learning, because the focus is on absorbing and remembering information. There is a rational (analytical) epistemology, founded on learner independence and association of existing understanding with new knowledge. The learner is recognised as being able to process the learning, to understand it and remember it.
3. Experiential: brings both behaviourist and cognitive learning together, with the learner moving from dependence to independence as they gain in knowledge and understanding, and as their skills increase. There is an inherent assumption of trial and error in learning, with the emotional impact (affective engagement) being given equal credit to physical activity and knowledge progression; experiences are consciously reflected and analysed. The learner is assumed to want to learn from their experience, to have the conceptual and analytical capacity to be able to reflect on the experience and to have the decision-making and problem-solving capacity to apply the learning elsewhere. While the experiential learner may need support to reflect on and understand the experience, they need sophisticated personal cognitive competency to do so.

Adventure learning uses experiences to bring about learning in a ‘demo-mimic-do’ process. As the relationship begins, the instructor has to start from the point of assuming the learner has no knowledge or understanding of the experience (activity); so, the instructor takes a lead role in showing the learners what to do, explaining necessary actions and processes. The learners are assumed to have the ability gradually to take over responsibility for the activity, making decisions and working increasingly without direction. They are expected not only to understand what they are doing, but also why something does not work and how they can modify their action to achieve success.

For adventure learning to become embedded in learning programmes, it needs to be understood as a natural phenomenon that has been around as long as there has been life on earth, rather than a new technique or a passing ‘fad’. Let’s be clear: once upon a time, life was nothing but an adventure and all learning was activity-based and happened outdoors! The ‘outdoors’ could be argued to have begun with the ‘big bang’ some four and a half billion years ago. Although the first creatures that emerged about 3.8 billion years ago could not be said to have been cognisant enough to pass life skills to their young, they were the foundations of the multicellular life forms that evolved into what we would recognise today. These multicellular creatures emerged and evolved with an intrinsic sense of survival that many passed to their young. It is estimated that the first hominid species showed the initial steps towards culture, language and social order around four million years ago.

Human beings as we know them (Homo sapiens) emerged only about 200,000 years ago, but have continually evolved, as do the cultural, communal and technological bases by which we understand the concept of ‘society’. In those intervening 200,000 years, the beings that became humans developed the inborn instincts to survive, to thrive and to teach their young how to survive and thrive. In the days of the hunter–gatherers, children and young people learned by observing others and putting their observations into practice, learning by trial and error. Human consciousness led to the development of shelters, farming, factory production and organised learning. As humankind has evolved, there has been an increasing attempt to tame nature, make life safe, removing the need for and inherent instinct in humans to meet the challenges of survival with which they were once faced.

A critical distinction between humans and other creatures is that humans have progressed their social capacity such that they have choice; people today do not have to spend their waking hours ensuring they have shelter, can eat, are protected, they have learned to store resources so they may choose the extent and manner of any engagement with ‘the outdoors’. Evolution has meant industrialisation and the loss of traditional life skills; people now are disconnected from nature, most fear it or attempt to soften it with modern social comforts.

Adventure learning is a way to foster a re-engagement with nature, allowing participants to have their learning processes stimulated by experience and within a framework of direction by others, a modern equivalent of a return to the young being taught by the elders! The inherent drive of humans to engage with nature and learn from challenges posed by it, to experience, to survive has not evol...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Part I The Theory
• Part II The Toolkit
• Appendix 1 Sample lesson plans
• Appendix 2 Survival game scenarios
• Appendix 3 Sample risk assessment
• Appendix 4 Sample route card
• Indexes