How Does Outdoor Education Add Value

Outdoor activities, by combining cerebral, physical, and emotional dimensions, offer the opportunity to discover the behaviour patterns and interpersonal skills of how people behave, interact, and achieve, regardless of whether they are abseiling or undertaking a work role. This is the key to the effective use of the outdoors. First designing a course that is strong in isomorphs - the similarity between behaviours at work and in the outdoors – and then enabling participants to discover this relevance and transfer their learning back to the workplace. This has been described as isomorphic transfer – the gaining of knowledge and skills in one environment that can be transferred to another.

So how do outdoor activities that appear unrelated to work activities improve performance at work?

Effective learning takes place when an individual puts an idea into practice. That practical experience tests the original idea, the individual can reflect upon the results achieved - modify the idea as necessary - and try again. The outdoors is a superb environment in which to do this because it is closer to reality than most forms of training as participants behave normally and cannot role-play due to the unfamiliarity of the setting. For most people it takes them out of their comfort zone, which is necessary to develop and learn. Learning occurs when we move briefly into stretch, try new things, and return to comfort to reflect upon the experience and assess what we have learned. Soon what was in stretch becomes comfortable, our comfort zone expands, and we become more capable. My Peak Potential’s experience of controlling people’s exposure to risk in the outdoors ensures that participants do not spend time in their panic zone as that causes stress and significantly hinders performance and learning.

Not only does the outdoors provide a novel, non-contextual environment for learning but also because tasks are unrelated to work activities and are relatively simple they expose the processes by which individuals perform and achieve. Outdoor activities offer an emotional dimension that parallels real life and presents a full learning experience. The physical, emotional, and cognitive nature of the activities helps by breaking down psychological barriers that can inhibit participation and learning. The immediacy and nature of the tasks involving these three domains requires full participation, the taking of decisive action, and heightens the experience. So gaining greater commitment from the participants and encouraging longer retention of the learning outcomes.
The safety of participants must be of the highest priority and although outdoor activities have apparent danger, in reality the danger is minimized and mitigated.

The outcome of well structured outdoor programmes is one of the individual experiencing strong emotions in a safe environment. This is important because it exposes the underpinning processes (the behaviour patterns and interpersonal skills) of how people relate to others. In taking what they perceive as risk, whilst being challenged and supported, participants can explore and understand their own limitations, how they react to others and how that affects their behaviour. Limitations can then be placed in context and practical steps planned to overcome them.
[1] Teigen KH., 1994. Yerkes-Dodson: A Law for all Seasons. University of Troms0, Norway. Sage Publications.