Outdoor education programs help students realize their "wild" nature by linking them concretely with their surroundings, providing stories that explain the natural world, encouraging feelings of wonder, and expanding identification with nature as parts of the world, previously perceived as "outside," become part of the self.…

Essential features of an outdoor integrated curriculum include experiential learning, whole process, authenticity, challenge, responsibility, and connection with the community. Additional factors that result only from outdoor learning include inescapable consequences, personal growth, and sense of wonder. Problems of curriculum integration include…