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Cocieru, Ovidiu C.; Katz, Matthew; McDonald, Mark A.
doi: 10.1177/1053825919888778pmid: N/A
Background: The Classroom-as-Organization (CAO) is an experiential learning course in which students create and manage an organization as part of class activities. Student interaction with peers is an important feature of the CAO. Educators suggested that student interactions in CAOs follow certain patterns, but these observations have not been tested in empirical research. Purpose: The research focused on exploring patterns of interaction in a CAO. Methodology/Approach: Network data were collected from students and instructors at four different times during a two-semester CAO course. The authors then used social status theory, friendship formation literature, and Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis (SIENA) to test hypotheses about interactions in the CAO. Findings/Conclusions: The authors found evidence that (a) localized informal leaders emerge in the class, (b) reciprocation ties between individuals happens within, but not necessarily between departments, and (c) there is a close connection between class-related interactions and social interactions outside of the class, impacting leadership in the CAO. Implications: Instructors need to pay close attention to understanding and managing interdepartmental relationships in CAOs. Furthermore, educators may only have a limited understanding of CAO group dynamics, given that they may not have a high awareness of student social interactions outside of class.
Bolick, Cheryl M.; Glazier, Jocelyn; Stutts, Christoph
doi: 10.1177/1053825919877212pmid: N/A
Background: This study examines the role of a weeklong experiential residency program on teachers’ beliefs about self and practice. Purpose: The goal of two separate intensive experiences was to help teachers generate new insight about the place of students, the teacher, and the school that extended beyond a surface-level understanding of experiential education. Methodology/Approach: Through a qualitative approach, the research team used field notes, course documents, participant reflections, researcher journals, and follow-up interviews to analyze the impact of participants’ immersion in either of the experiential outdoor residencies. Findings/Conclusions: The unpredictable nature of the physical and social environment of the experiential week helped teachers to see the central role of community in the learning process. Furthermore, teacher responses to the experience defied simple categorization along a prior theoretical construct. Teachers indicated a growing confidence in their ability to seek out and overcome challenges across multiple domains. Implications: These teachers were challenged to integrate multiple social and emotional aspects of self into their learning, while envisioning the same for their own students. Their experiences and reflections support an expanded role for immersive experiences outside of the traditional classroom in teacher education.
Bennion, John; Cannon, Brian; Hill, Brian; Nelson, Riley; Ricks, Meagan
doi: 10.1177/1053825919880202pmid: N/A
Background: Experiential educators face difficulties assessing participants and programs because there are so many measurement tools to choose from, many measures have validity issues such as those based on self-reported data, objective tests may not adequately measure social or psychological outcomes, and tests in content disciplines often assess knowledge rather than skill in synthesis, analysis, or evaluation. Purpose: We hypothesized that an open-ended essay final would reliably measure individual growth, internalization of foundational threshold concepts in our disciplines, and the effectiveness of our outdoor, interdisciplinary program. Methodology/Approach: Student essays contained 36 student-generated concepts spread across our four disciplines (biology, writing, history, and recreation) which we compared with 20 threshold concepts from professional literature. Findings/Conclusions: Individual students identified about half of the concepts generated by the whole group, illustrating that their learning varied significantly. Our group identified 13 of the published threshold concepts. Students demonstrated comprehension of threshold concepts—foundational ways of seeing—as opposed to restatements of information from teachers’ lectures. Implications: Writing essays aids permanent cognitive and behavioral learning; coding responses to open-ended essay questions for threshold concepts can be a valuable tool for both individual student and program assessment in experiential education.
Collins, Melissa A.; Totino, Joanna; Hartry, Ardice; Romero, Valeria F.; Pedroso, Rosio; Nava, Rosalinda
doi: 10.1177/1053825919887407pmid: N/A
Background: Women and people of color are consistently underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and careers. Though there are myriad factors underlying these gaps, one potential variable may be the extent to which these students feel connected to their STEM classroom experiences. Purpose: The present study investigated the potential of a service-learning experience to support STEM engagement for underrepresented youth. Methodology/Approach: Two cohorts of high school students participated in a summer program through which they built “solar suitcases” to provide electricity for communities in need. Observations and student surveys measured student engagement and changes in STEM attitudes, dispositions, and beliefs. Findings/Conclusions: Students were highly engaged in service-learning activities and demonstrated improved Science Fascination, Science Values, and STEM Career Affinity after participating in the program. Implications: Implications for the design and delivery of culturally relevant service-learning experiences are discussed.
Dubin, Alexsandra; Garst, Barry A.; Gaslin, Tracey; Schultz, Beth E.
doi: 10.1177/1053825919869367pmid: N/A
Background: Summer camps engage millions of youth in enrichment opportunities during the summertime while employing a substantial young adult workforce to provide high-quality programs and services to camp participants. Workplace fatigue has been implicated in camp-related injury and illness events, yet few studies have targeted fatigue among camp employees. Purpose: This study aimed to better understand how fatigue impacted employee performance as well as strategies for reducing the negative impacts of fatigue within camp settings. Methodology/Approach: Focus groups were conducted with camp health care providers and directors, and their responses were analyzed using directed content analysis. The analysis process was guided by sensitizing concepts from the literature. Findings/Conclusions: Emergent themes suggested that camp-related fatigue is conceptualized as a construct of time, types, and causes; is a distinct experience leading to setting-specific outcomes; is managed using administrative and peer supports; and is sometimes perceived in positive ways. Implications: This exploratory study highlighted the unique challenges associated with working in a camp setting and the potential development of fatigue as a starting point informing future research. It suggests that future research should include a broader study population, including frontline staff, as well as possible quantitative measures.
doi: 10.1177/1053825919881784pmid: N/A
Background: Teaching and learning in outdoor experiential education is often conducted on lands with troubled histories of settler colonialism. This calls for new and creative forms of socioecological responsibility to attend to human supremacism and exceptionalism that marginalizes, exploits, dominates, and objectifies Other(s) in these Anthropocene times. Purpose: Through posthumanist philosophy (re)conceptualizing Western binary logics, this article explores possibilities for postcolonial land ethics in outdoor experiential education to address past, present, and future socioecological injustices and threats. Methodology/Approach: Adopting new materialist methodologies, this article examines affective materiality emerging from a series of multisensory researcher/teacher enactments, as set within pedagogies attuning-with land with a Grade 4/5 class in Canada. Findings/Conclusions: The affective materiality of sense-making in the researcher/teacher enactments provided opportunities to challenge discursively positioned land ethics, suggesting a transforming-with Other(s) through relationally co-constituted existences. Implications: Understanding that no separate and discrete worldviews exist in which individuals act through autonomous agency, but that worlding emerges through relational agency, teaching, and learning in outdoor experiential education can generate an intrinsic sense of responsibility to attend to more equitable relationships with Other(s) for/with/in these Anthropocene times.
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