Sibthorpe, J., Paisley, K., Gookin,
J., and Furman, N.
(2008) ‘The Pedagogic Value of Student Autonomy in Adventure
Education’,
Journal of Experiential
Education, 31 (2): 136-151.
Student autonomy is widely believed to
be educationally
important ‘the student belief that he or she has some sense of
meaningful
control’ (137).Student autonomy seems
to lead to both academic and personal outcomes including ‘perceived
competence,
self esteem, creativity, and conceptual understanding’ (137).Supporting student autonomy means providing
more choice, a clear rationale, and ‘perspective taking’.Teachers need to provide students with actual
occasions where they can choose, get them to discuss the reasons why
they might
want to learn something, and offer a chance to show that they can
understand
and sympathise with students positions and perspectives.Specifically, teachers might make sure they
are ‘asking for opinions, listening to answers, allowing others to
talk,
encouraging effort, and praising progress (Reeve, 2005)’ (137).
Activities need to be meaningful,
something that makes an
actual difference.This can vary between
individuals, but there might be common agreement on matters such as not
spending a great deal of time deciding what to have for lunch, as
opposed to ‘being
able to plan the content, timing, flow and execution of a full day of
programming’ (138). Student voice can be encouraged ‘by allowing
participants
to initiate, design and participate in activities of their own choice
and...having access to adults in the
programme who listen to and respect youth’s opinions’ (138).
The idea of a ‘challenge by choice’ is
often incorporated,
allowing participants to choose and regulate their own levels of
involvement.Such empowerment is claimed
to lead to ‘self efficacy…Life
effectiveness…Leadership, communication
skills and outdoor skills’.Actual
practices might include requiring participants to be leader of the day,
set
goals and lead expeditions [sounds like what I did as a 14 year old
naval cadet]
(139).
However student led expeditions and
independent travel (‘autonomous
student expeditions ‘ or ASE) can bring significant risks, and
withdrawing
supervision has been challenged.This
paper sets out to see if autonomy does lead to the claimed development
outcomes, especially empowerment, and to attempt to assess physical
risks. [It is very ambiguous with the former -- see
below] Participants were on a national outdoor
leadership course.Data were collected
using an instrument designed for the course and based on course
objectives,
measuring ‘perceived gains in leadership… [and].. outdoor skills…
[using a ] retrospective
pretest/post test format’ (141).Personal empowerment was measured by a specially
designed ‘Characteristics
of the Experience Scale (Sibthorpe, 2001)’ [must look this up].
Risk was estimated by examining ‘the
injury and evacuation
statistics’ on a particularly particularly well recorded course There
was also ‘a
two item lie scale’, and data were also collected from the instructors.Chi square scores
were calculated to compare
actual numbers of injuries and evacuations with those expected. None of the actual numbers of injuries etc were
statistically different than what one might expect from chance alone,
but ‘inspection’
seems to show that there are no more incidents during unaccompanied
parts of
the course (142).Overall, ‘the
contention that the risks from these approaches are not acceptable was
not
supported by the data in this study’ (144).
The substantial results are summarised
on page 142,
and are quite difficult to follow.Pretest
scores were compared with post test,
and the data analysed [in some way I don’t understand—hierarchical
linear modelling?].What
seems to be happening is that models are constructed so that particular
factors
of interest can be used to predict responses on tests elsewhere.For example one model tested the predictive
power of a personal empowerment score on subsequent scores .Another one took the number of days of ASE as the
predictor for
subsequent scores.For technical
reasons other models were constructed which included no predictor
variables in
order to explain the variance in the ‘two outcome variables: leadership
and outdoor
skills’ (142). So here, the outcome variables seem to be scores,
possibly self
rated, on leadership and outdoor skills, measured before and after the
course
took place.Other technical refinements
are difficult to follow.For example if
the course variable (number of days of ASE) explained a lot of the
variance,
additional terms were added to the models—‘the predictors and
cross-level interaction
terms’ (142): I must say I don’t understand this.A
residual variance was also calculated,
allowing ‘for the variability of the regression slopes’.Variables that did not explain a significant
portion of the variance were removed from the model.Apparently, both the null models, or the
other models mentioned above, found a significant amount of variance
attributable to course differences—in particular that ‘between 11 and
15% of
the variance in the outcomes could be attributed to course differences’
[so
does that word ‘significant’ mean statistically significant or
theoretically
significant?Whatever it means, a
maximum of 15% of the variance seems pretty small beer to me!].
Then a personal empowerment score was
added as an additional
variable.While they were there, the
team also did some ‘cross-level interaction’ to see if personal
empowerment and
days of ASE were themselves interacting (142).You will be relieved to know that the interaction
between these
variables ‘was not significant’.However,
both variables on their own ‘were significant predictors’ of gains in
both leadership
and in outdoor skills, in both cases and for both variables at a .01
level of
significance.Confusingly, despite the
remarks about low levels of interaction above, ‘days of ASE can predict
empowerment.Participants who have
experienced more days …of ASE on
their courses reported higher levels of empowerment’ (143).The authors think that ‘the empowering
mechanism of ASE’ is the active ingredient here [but more confusion
follows—ASE
also has empowerment, so it is hardly a surprise that it predicts
empowerment
measured on another scale?].
The course trained outdoor leaders
with some experience, and ‘program
participants may be markedly
different than other adventure outdoor programme participants’.In addition, some other measures are ‘self
reported perceptions and are, therefore, subject to participants’
biases’ (145).Ideally additional factors
associated with
the course should have been controlled as potential mediating variables
as well [not specified --selection for the course? duration?].Nevertheless, ‘the authors believe that ASE
are pedagogically valuable’ (145) [no doubt before they even did the
research].
The specific teacher behaviours above
‘are all immediately
translatable as leader behaviours in adventure education’ (146).However, leaders still have a responsibility
to ‘align the menu of choices with program goals’ (146).One useful technique appears to be having
instructors think out loud, discussing a particular decision with other
instructors in the presence of participants.Perspective-taking seems particularly important as
well, especially when
instructors exercise skills habitually, and may not remember how they
had
learned them—‘how can a complex task be broken down into manageable
steps’ (146).Allowing students to set
goals can be used,
for example where they choose to focus on a particular skill ‘such as
fishing or
climbing’, and the instructors can allow more time for these activities.Transferring responsibility enables students
to take the perspective of instructors and explore of rationales,
especially the
‘leader–of–the–day’ technique
(147).While these experiential
techniques are not new, ASE does offer ‘a rather unique opportunity for
providing student autonomy’ (147).
However, ‘the absence of instructors
should not be
automatically associated with autonomy support’ (147), and without
their
interventions, groups left to their own devices would probably not
develop ‘equitable
opportunities for autonomy’ (147).Instructors
may
also have to build their own teaching skills and judgment.One technique that might minimise risk is ‘remaining
close to but unobserved by groups throughout the day and camping
relatively nearby at nights, and intentionally meeting the student
group at
hazards’ (147).
Selected refs
Sibthorp, J.
(2001). Development and
validation of the
characteristics of experience scale for use in adventure based
programming [Abstract].
Proceedings of the 1999
Symposium on Leisure Research (p. 60). Ashburn, Virginia: National
Recreation and Park Association.
Sibthorp, J.
(2003). An empirical look at Walsh and Golins’ adventure education
process model:
Relationships between antecedent factors, perceptions of
characteristics
of an adventure education experience, and changes in selfefficacy. Journal of Leisure Research, 35(1),
80–106.
Sibthorp, J.
& Arthur-Banning, S. (2004). Developing life effectiveness through
adventure
education: The roles of participant expectations, perceptions of
empowerment,
and learning relevance. Journal of
Experiential Education 27(1),
32–50.