Background: Continuing education programs for teachers seek to enhance outcomes for participants and their students. Experiential wilderness-based programs offer outdoor-recreational activities and experiential teaching initiatives. Research needs to be conducted to reveal how they influence individual behaviors. Purpose: This research…

This investigation hypothesizes that the effects derived from the reintegration of adult wilderness education will connect adults in unique ways to nature landscapes. The study is based on two cases: a five-year wilderness program that the author designed in a remote part of Canada, and a Yellowstone wilderness program that occurs yearly. The…

This paper uses ethnography to explore an outdoor, arts-based intervention run by Urban Wilderness, in partnership with an English primary school. Urban Wilderness are a not-for-profit organisation which aims to connect children and young people from disadvantaged areas to locally accessible nature. Over the course of three afternoon workshops,…

This paper addresses pluralistic understandings of wilderness in the context of wilderness therapy (WT). The term wilderness perpetuates a modern worldview of place that beyond 'civilisation' exists an environment defined by risk, fear and an unpredictable nature. WT utilises outdoor travel and living practices during therapeutic intervention and…

Background: Youth expeditions are regarded as beneficial and even "life-changing" experiences for young people, however the evidence on their perceived long-term impact is limited. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to examine the perceived long-term influence of expeditions in participants' lives 29 and more years after going on…

This paper argues that the adoption of theories of racial capitalism as a framework for analysis can help shift dominant pedagogies in Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) to not just be more inclusive, but to reimagine ways that communities of outdoor education, recreation, and leadership can build awareness of the reproduction of the Wilderness and…

The outdoor domain has frequently been identified as one where women's skills and competences were undervalued compared with those of men. The aim of the study was to explore how men and women interact in the context of an educational wilderness expedition. The concepts of field, forms of capital and habitus of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu were…

This study examined student experiences participating in a peer-led three-day wilderness canoe excursion in Northern Ontario, Canada. This program is a mandatory outdoor experience program (MOEP) for third-year students and is the final course in a progressive series of outdoor experiences offered at the beginning of the first, second, and third…

Over the past 50 years, an evolution has occurred in the instruction of wilderness professionals and practitioners within the higher education realm. The National Wilderness Conference, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, provided a timely opportunity to discuss the current and future role of higher education and wilderness…

This study investigates eight college students' perceptions of their experiences during an accredited outdoor education course entitled Technical Canyoneering. The course took place in four separate desert canyons of the Colorado Plateau, two in Arches National Park, and two on nearby Bureau of Land Management public space. Utilizing the data…

This paper is a twelve-month follow-up study that explores perceived outcomes from participation in a Norwegian wilderness therapy program. Through a critical realist approach, the authors performed an in-depth analysis of individual interviews with ten adolescent participants. Long-term outcomes included the transfer and adaptation of calming and…

Outdoor and environmental educators are increasingly concerned about the presence and resistance of whiteness, racism, and settler colonialism in outdoor pedagogy. In this dissertation, I present three distinct inquiries examining the entanglement of educator identity, curriculum, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism in outdoor and environmental…

Outdoor experiential education (OEE) programs often cater to white, upper-class individuals. With major demographic shifts occurring in the United States, OEE organizations are confronting this imbalance. The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) is addressing this issue with its Gateway Scholarship Program. The purpose of this mixed-methods…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how participation in a wilderness-based OAE program affected the environmental attitudes and feelings of self-efficacy in participants' ages 14 to 17-years-old. The findings indicated that the OAE program did not have a significant impact on the environmental attitudes of the participants. The program did,…

The time children spend indoors with nature-based children's literature is as important as the time they spend outdoors. Children's literature traditionally has been replete with pastoral, animal, and wilderness stories that nurture a sense of wonder and excitement about the world we share. Such literature encourages a high regard for the…