Year 9 students who took part in adventure learning activities, either in school or at an outward-bound centre, demonstrated improved self-regulation immediately after the activities, and after 12 to 18 months all students demonstrated positive changes in behaviour and school engagement.
A team of researchers in the University’s Sheffield Institute of Education Research
The evaluation, commissioned and funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), investigated whether adventure learning - both in wild settings and at school - could lead to an improvement in self-regulation, student engagement, and behaviour.
Students at 97 schools were selected by staff due to their lack of engagement in their learning and were randomly allocated to one of two different programmes.
One was a five-day residential course run by the Outward Bound Trust that included activities like kayaking, mountaineering, and wild camping delivered by trained instructors. The other led by Commando Joes focused on scenario-based missions where the level of physical challenge was less and was delivered on-site at school by a trained instructor. Both interventions were delivered by trained instructors with school staff supporting; and were based around the need for the students to employ teamwork, resilience, communication and listening skills. A third control group of schools received a payment to put towards enrichment activities.
Data was collected at three points: prior to intervention, immediately after the intervention, and 12 to 18-months afterwards.
The independent evaluators found that students in both groups showed improvements in their behaviour over a year after the intervention, compared to a similar group of students who didn’t take part in one of the programmes. Both sets of students also showed positive improvements in school engagement.
Ben Willis, Senior Research Fellow and Dr Sarah Reaney-wood, Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, said: “It was exciting to be able to work on a trial that moved away from focusing solely on attainment based educational outcomes and recognised the benefits of Adventure based experiences for students. It was great to observe the interventions in action and witness first-hand how students were engaging in and benefitting from their participation.”
These findings should be interpreted with an acknowledgement that it includes data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic so they are based on samples with a high attrition rate.
Find out more about the research and read the full evaluation report.
