This study examined trust development between participants of outdoor education programs and outdoor leaders. Participants were college students enrolled in outdoor education courses. Using a factorial survey design, the technical ability, interpersonal ability, benevolence, integrity, and gender of an outdoor leader was displayed randomly in a…

A critical element in lifelong learning is the self-regulation of motivation to learn. Learners without motivation to learn lack the drive to actively engage with ideas and content, even if they have the ability to learn. Motivation for sustained engagement can be considered a combination of goal-relevant motivation and experience-defined…

To be effective, experiential educators need to understand the developmental characteristics of their students so that they can tailor their programs to their capabilities. Often, their primary population consists of teens or college students. Recognizing that learning is a primary objective of experiential education programs, experiential…

Transfer of learning from adventure programs remains of critical interest to adventure education professionals. Although some research has investigated what transfers, notably less has focused on mechanisms that might influence transfer. This paper explores the mechanisms of transfer reported by a stratified random sample of National Outdoor…

Establishing trusting relationships between leaders and participants is one way that outdoor leaders can create an emotionally safe and productive milieu that supports the attainment of desirable outcomes. Multidisciplinary literature offers considerable insight into leader trust development and the outcomes that are linked to trust in a leader.…

Successful hiring, training, and pairing or grouping of staff requires administrators to consider the relationship between their programs' goals and the specific outdoor leadership skills of individual leaders. Authors have divided outdoor leadership skills into a three-category structure, and models of outdoor leadership have focused on skills…

There is an increasing interest in the field of experiential education to move beyond simply documenting the value of experiential education programs and, instead, develop more evidence-based models for experiential education practice (cf., Gass, 2005; Henderson, 2004). Due in part to the diversity of experiential education programs, participants,…

Outdoor education researchers have accumulated a notable cache of work documenting the outcomes of participation in outdoor education programs (e.g., Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997; Kaplan & Talbot, 1983). While continuing this work remains an important task, some researchers are turning their attention toward understanding the process of…

Do researchers make a difference with the research they conduct? Most people would like to think so. In this paper, the author argues that much of the research conducted by researchers is guided primarily by personal interests and needs and not because of professional needs or identified gaps in knowledge. The author also argues that experiential…

While much attention has been paid to what students learn in outdoor education settings, little has been paid to the process through which that learning occurs. The purpose of this study was to identify the mechanisms through which students report learning one of six targeted objectives on courses offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School.…

Allowing students a sense of autonomy has long been considered an important pedagogical tool. This paper synthesizes the current literature on student autonomy from the education, youth development, and outdoor adventure fields and explores its value through an analysis of data from the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). The results…

The processes behind many adventure education programs remain poorly documented, and how development is fostered through adventure is not well understood. While a number of theory-based articles do exist, little empirical research has been available to influence experiential education program design. This study explores the roles that participant…

Hierarchical linear modeling (HIM) is an approach used in data analysis to better understand how program outcomes are affected by the "nested" nature of data collected in many studies. An outcome can be considered variables such as an individual's self-efficacy, social skills, or more targeted outcomes such as demonstrated reading and mathematical…

Adventure education research struggles to measure components of the field's larger, complex processes and outcomes. Because valid measures provide the foundation of quantitative research, finding, assessing, and utilizing good measures of the outcomes and processes of adventure education are necessary. Describes measurement techniques, validity,…

Multivariate analytic techniques offer useful research methods that permit the experiential educator to test theoretical models, analyze the effects of several variables acting together, and predict the effects of one set of variables upon another set of variables. Several of these techniques are discussed, including analysis of variance, multiple…