Figure 9
The states of learning
Remember the adage of ‘the six Ps’: prior preparation and planning prevents poor performance? Anyone can head off to the hills for a walk or down a river in a canoe. This is not adventure; it may be adventurous but it is not a structured experience that leads to learning. Building the framework of a learning experience demands planning and preparation; understanding the theories that underpin the learning, the processes that come into play as people undergo the adventure experience and learn from it, are important in being able to plan a meaningful session that moves the activity from an experience to learning. The activity itself does not deliver learning, it is the way in which the educator communicates and draws out the learning. A taster kayak session of splashing and games teaches participants that getting wet is fun (or not, depending on how they feel about it), but building skills towards independent paddling teaches them that they are strong enough to set themselves goals and achieve them. It requires not just providing the experience but also re-living the stages of it, talking through what happened and why, exploring what worked and what went wrong. The processing of the experience can be more important in the long term than the experience itself.
A well-constructed, well-run adventure session is enlivening, motivating participants to want more and making them feel rewarded, both psychologically and emotionally satisfied. Well-constructed adventure programmes move people from their ‘comfort zone’, where they exist in equilibrium into their ‘stretch zone’, where learning potential is maximised as the senses become enlivened to stimulate focus and concentration. The states of learning existence may be represented as a series of concentric circles, with the person in the centre (Figure 9). Without challenge, a person remains within their comfort zone, calm, relaxed, even bored. New experiences cause disruption to the comfort zone, threatening the existing balance of life. As something new appears, the person enters their stretch zone, interested, curious and receptive to learn, senses become stimulated. However, if the disruption poses too much of a challenge, it becomes a threat and the person moves straight through their stretch zone into a state of panic, where senses become volatile and no learning occurs; there is too much for the brain to absorb and the senses freeze.
Figure 9
The states of learning
Learning is a fine balance of new opportunities and experiences; the receptivity of the learner is dependent upon the way the activity is presented, how the disruption to their comfort zone is introduced, how they are supported to engage with the activity and challenge offered and how they are empowered to learn from it. Poorly devised programmes either do not move people out of their comfort zone (high competency, low risk) or moves them straight into the panic zone (high risk, low competency), where they feel stressed, frightened and cannot think or act logically.
However, the idea of moving people into their stretch zone has its limitation. Instructors should not assume that they immediately could launch into activities that are highly challenging and raise stress levels on their first encounter with the group. They need to know something of the group members, their abilities and their responses. The model assumes that placing people into a challenging situation will bring them naturally to ‘rise to the occasion’, that they can overcome hesitancy to grow and learn from participation. It also assumes that the adventure learning instructor can competently assess and manage each individual’s locus of comfort and, more critically, the point at which they will move from one sphere to the next. The model should be thought of more as a process that demonstrates the concept of adventure learning, not a framework by which instructors should build programmes based on learning through stress. Adventure programmes should challenge participants but allow them to advance beyond their comfort zone only when they are emotionally and psychologically ready to do so.
A framework of learning is designed to engineer a holistic process of meaningful learning and reflection towards the building of (transferable) knowledge; the skills used help to shape the way in which people view themselves, their level of self-esteem, their aspirations and the extent to which they then control their lives. Many participants in learning are young people, upon whom rests the welfare of the future. With no investment by society, the young will fail to attain the capacity to sustain the infrastructure and development of the nation and fail to develop the social awareness and moral fortitude that makes communities thrive as safe, supportive and engaging places to live. An important part of building that capacity is providing a platform for social education. People from different backgrounds, of different abilities and with different ways of thinking can be brought together with the common task and focus of the adventurous activity. By having contact with people outside of their usual group, participants come to new understanding and develop new alliances. Challenging activities can be used to address social and urban problems, such as gun and knife crime, gang culture or social hierarchies, by bringing groups together who do not normally engage or who would customarily engage on a negative basis. An important outcome for society of adventure is the development of self-awareness. This self-knowledge can be used to develop social justice programmes. As adventure produces learning and develops understanding among groups, it brings tolerance. With that come altruism and the impetus to develop fairness. As participants are brought to understand themselves, they realise their underlying propensities and the consequences of their actions, bringing them to a more enlightened existence. Similarly, health issues like obesity, asthma and diabetes can be addressed through activities outdoors, as participants experience different forms of exercise, learn their capacities and learn the extent and limitation of their engagement. Young people need to learn that they are individuals; they need to develop emotional stamina and a moral compass of their own.
The media is a pervasively omnipotent force and for decades, globally successful films have presented a (skewed) picture of reality that has become perceived as the way to be. People nowadays are confronted with constant visual and audio stimuli, being constantly entertained, informed or connected to others in some way. To young people with a developing but immature sense of self, these images are attractive and become the embodiment of how they should look and act and how their lives should play out. These images become the quintessence of conditional positive regard (Rogers 1959) and the representation of how young people imagine the world and their existence and interactions within it. The sense of inadequacy can stay with young people and influence them for the rest of their lives. People have become exposed to remote role models and less reliant on close physical contact for their personal development and social education. Television, films, magazines, the internet, computer games, mobile telephones: all are visual and have the ability to portray a vision of a perceived perfection to which young people feel they must strive, but provide nothing in the way of emotional or psychological guidance. Over generations, social and family life has changed, there is less structure and inter-generational influence in the raising of young children. This opens the door to pervasion by the media, which may manifest itself in an aggression of body image, stereotyping or through poor physical health or psychological development. Without the psychological literacy to question the images that traditionally came through cross-generational family support, people are left powerless and exposed to unrealistic role modelling. The informal learning aspect of adventure learning offers support, engaging participants to learn about themselves and how to manage their existence within the world. Processing their experiences, understanding how they react, recognising what triggers various responses and developing strategies for handling these enable people to seize control of their lives and to feel comfortable and confident in themselves, rather than being overly concerned with the perceptions of others.
Adventure learning does not have to take place in wild, remote or challenging terrain. The planning of an adventure learning experience can be progressive, incremented according to a range of ‘zones’ that begin with the familiar, perhaps the school grounds. The experience may then progress further afield to be more challenging physically and geographically, perhaps a local park. The experience and terrain can be built up in this way towards increasingly remote and challenging experiences, to a day on the moors, at an adventure centre and even on to a residential experience. Launching into too extreme an experience too soon can be damaging to the participant and threaten their immediate and long-term experience. The process can start in school, with subjects harnessed to adventure learning in a way that makes them fun, interesting and memorable, yet also increase the impact of the learning associated to make it more ingrained in the memory of the participant.
Adventure learning, even when simply taken into the school grounds, harnesses curiosity and can be linked to underpinning theory and provide a real inspiration to learn. A cycle develops, whereby participants enjoy learning something and can see how they may apply it elsewhere, they then want to learn something more and so seek further learning; as their knowledge base grows, they develop cognitively, but in a structured adventure learning context they are with others, so learn from one another’s experiences also. As the learning experiences continue, the participant becomes more comfortable with their knowledge and their learning, and less concerned with the way they appear to others. The result is a knowledgeable, balanced individual comfortable with themselves and understanding of the world in which they live.
Rogers, C. (1959) A theory of therapy, personality and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science, Vol. 3: Formulations of the Person and the Social Context. New York: McGraw-Hill.