Measuring the Impact of Outdoor Management Development- a Literature Review

While reading different essays addressing the topic of nature, I came to the conclusion that they all shared the idea that being outside can make an impact in everyone no matter if you believe you only belong in a city or forest because it can bring you serenity and show you all the amazing things you wouldn't be able to see anywhere else. In Wendell Berry’s essay “An Entrance to the Woods,” he states that people can use the quiet of the woods to forget all their problems. Berry wrote “One is that, though I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies can be transported.” Nature has a way to transport ones mind and spirit elsewhere while the body is left behind on earth as we travel deep into thought. Adding on to that idea, the essay “A City Person Encountering Nature” by Maxine Hong Kingston the author explains that nature is a giver of peace and patience with its slow cycles that may frustrate people, but help keep a sane mind. Society is fast paced, making everyone feel that they need to keep the same pace in order to get things done, but we don't realize that although our bodies are moving and pushing, our minds are exhausted and cannot keep up with the fast pace. Kingston wrote “Preferring the city myself, I can better discern natural phenomena when books point them out; I also need to verify

As a child, I unraveled nature’s beauty and existence. Each new experience brought me feelings of excitement and joy, sparkling my imagination and igniting my curiosity. It all seemed so large back then. Oceans appeared endless as they reached towards the horizon. Treetops seemed to make friends with the puffy-looking clouds as they soared to the sky. Over the years however, as I have grown older and life has become more complex, I am beginning to think less and less about the natural world around me. I glimpse sunset stuck in rush-hour traffic trying to return school after debate practices and only listen to the pitter-patter of the rain when there’s a storm outside. Forests and oceans seemed less appealing as they became intertwined with the urban development. In a way, I was becoming more and more distanced from the so-called nature. So, with an overwhelming desire for adventure and to escape the masses, my family and I drove to Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas last summer.

Humans often find bliss in nature, as it can be a place of comfort for many. On the other hand, nature is also a place where we go to test our strength, and learn life lessons. By getting out there and letting the trials of mother nature challenge us, valuable encounters and experiences build our character in a positive way. Humans crave adventure. With nature’s resources, the glorified idea of adventure becomes a reality.

“The developed world deprives children of a basic and inalienable right: unstructured outdoor play. Children today have substantially less access to nature, less free range, and less time for independent play than previous generations had.” This quote is from the research based paper titled, “Where the Wild Things Should Be: Healing Nature Deficit Disorder through the Schoolyard." This article touches many aspects of how children now a days need more exposure to nature like it was on the older days. Currently, there are many playgrounds around the United States and even more the world. This article is trying to bring awareness to the problem of if playgrounds do not have enough nature or is too safe then it is

Being outdoors has a positive impact on children's sense of well-being and helps all aspects of children's development.

Outdoor Education in KS3 and KS4 involves different adventurous activities that can be accomplished either as an individual or in a group. These activities include things such as: residential visits, orienteering, climbing, caving, team building, problem solving and many more. It generally provides depth to the curriculum which makes an important contribution to pupil’s physical, personal and social education (OFSTED, 2004; Priest and Gass, 1997). In order for these activities to be successful and meet the National Curriculum (NC), teachers must make sure all KS3 pupils are taking part in these outdoor adventurous activities (OAA), whilst being intellectually and physically challenged (National Curriculum, 2014). The two schemes of work presented are aimed to meet these NC subject content targets. They are two very different schemes of work but they both provide opportunities for pupils which challenge them both physically and mentally. The year 8 scheme of work focuses on a variety of different OAA activities that can be progressed and developed throughout each lesson and over the period of time they are in school. The content challenges the pupils thinking throughout the whole six weeks, developing the way they think to solve particular problems. Whereas, the year 9 scheme of work primarily focuses on the planning and preparation for a Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) expedition which will be carried out at the end of the term.

ii. Another important factor I must consider when identifying the needs of my learners is their learning process. A commonly used theory of learning process is that of Kolb (1984) who describes four different stages of the learning process as; Concrete experience, observation and reflection, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation. This theory particularly gained insight into the fact that greater understanding is achieved by learners when different and appropriate means are deployed to teach the same concept.

My central idea for this topic is for my audience to be aware that spending time outdoors is important for the body and mind and helps you relieve stress more so than having not to spend time outdoors. Spending more time outdoors can be done in many ways and it is healthy for your body.

Kolb’s theory (1984) is based on a four-stage learning cycle in which the learner contacts all the stages. These stages include first, concrete experience (how an individual encounters a situation), second, reflective observation (what an individual thinks about the situation), third, abstract conceptualization (how the individual analyzes the situation), and fourth, active experimentation (how the individual’s use of the conclusions in a situation change or prepare for another situation) (p. 21). Kolb also understood that individuals have different learning styles. Some individuals learn by observing while others learn by hands-on experience. Therefore, Kolb created side cycles to explain where in the learning cycles an individual’s learning style would fall. Although Kolb’s theory is a

The main idea of Mooney’s article, “The Radical Political Implications of Spending Time Outdoors,” is that people who spend time in nature are more cooperative than those who spend theirs in man-made buildings. Mooney tells about a study done by John M. Zelenski. Zelenski had two groups of people. One group watched a nature video. The other group watched a video about architecture. Then he tested their cooperation by having them play a video game about catching fish. Zelenski found that those who watched the nature video were more cooperative than those who watched the architecture video. I agree that people who spend time in nature are more cooperative than those who do not.

Although Roger’s experiential learning theory has provided many examples of advantages, there are some limitations that follow in his outlined theory. When discussing the implications of experiential learning, we often wonder what the full meaning represents. “The main problem about experience, a problem which precedes questions about how we can learn best from experience, lies in a double unsaid: a silence about the implication of experience in language and a silence about the implication of experiential learning in discourse” (Boud, Cohen & Walker, 1993, p. 169). This author explains that through the very subconscious thoughts, we often approach events believing that they have to acquire a particular meaning. Sometimes

a. “Experiences in nature can result in a direct increase of various forms of happiness or well-being, in addition to increasing well-being via satisfaction of basic psychological needs” (p. 374).

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (2017) believes that outdoor learning is a powerful tool that is proven to raise achievement, improve social, emotional and personal development and contributes to the health and well-being of children and young people. There is no doubt that children will learn better if they are given space to discover and explore for themselves. The Northern Ireland Curriculum: Primary (2007, p.44) states that outdoor learning has an important role in the emotional development of children where they are “free to run, shout and play exuberantly.” Children can learn about important

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle is a theory that argues that we learn from our experiences of life on a daily basis. Cognitive ability is the way people learn and Kolb believed from an early age we begin to develop a sort of instinctive preference as to the way we process information and use it. Kolb (1984) believes that the process of learning follows a pattern or cycle. Kolb’s cycle is made up of 4 stages; the first stage is concrete experience and Kolb believes that life is full of loads of different experiences that everyone can learn from and whether you are at home, work, school or even out shopping that there was experiences everywhere within those sectors and that it was a way for us to start the learning cycle. The concrete experience is the doing stage, the stage where you have the experience. We then have stage two which is reflective observation, this stage involved looking back at our experiences and reflecting on them. Stage three is the abstract conceptualisation which is

In the reading Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development by David Kolb (1984), he proposed that learning is a cycle process in which individuals learn through their own experiences in life. This notion of the learning cycle in which he was influenced by the ideas of three other theorists (Piaget, Dewey, and Lewinian) called it Experiential Learning Theory. Kolb’s theory was based on how people learned by imputing information and processing the information. Within this two abilities, there are four steps in which Kolb’s believe the learning process occurs. The first one he calls “concrete experience”, in which one actually does the learning right then and now. The second one is “reflective observation” when the learner thinks about what they did as a reflection of the experience. The next step is the “abstract conceptualization”, where the learner makes a generalization of the experience. The last step is “active experimentation”, where the learner puts to practice his/her understanding and adapts to it. The learner does this by taking all the first three steps of the learning cycle and seeing the results (pg. 30). Learning is a process in which individuals learn through trial and error. This process can then be reused with our prior experience to strengthen the outcome of our first experience. It is shaped as a cycle in the way we process information cognitively. This is how I understood of the reading on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory.