Adventure programs attempt to control or limit injuries in high-risk programming. This risk management has concentrated on the physical safety of participants at the expense of emotional and developmental security. In the zeal for accident-free statistics, a highly controlled, directive approach is created that treats individuals according to a…

People involved in adventurous activities frequently experience positive phenomena termed peak experience, peak performance, and "flow." Characteristics of these phenomena are compared, along with factors influencing the ability to experience such peak moments. Csikszentmihalyi's flow models are examined with regard to perceived levels…

Outdoor pursuits can facilitate major psychological and philosophical change in participants, and can act as a catalyst for self-actualization. Participants are temporarily relieved from all but the basic needs in life, allowing efforts to be concentrated on intense, meaningful, personal experience. (KS)

The staff of an outdoor recreational or adventure program inadvertently, through its actions, may plant the idea of a lawsuit in an injured participant's mind. Lawsuits may be avoided by continuing the relationship of trust developed in the program and by helping the injured party get back to normal life or even rejoin the program. (SV)

The diverse practitioners in adventure therapy need to be mindful of the assumptions they bring to the genre from their own fields, the interface between the different therapeutic schools and outdoor adventure, the extent to which "deep" psychotherapy will be practiced, how outdoor adventure changes the client-therapist relationship, and…

An adventure educator describes his process of "waking up" to awareness of the role of ethics in professional practice. Four critical incidents in this process involved the obligation to protect clients from undue harm, responsibility to continually assess one's professional competence, duty to share information with peers, and…

Three British outdoor educators point out that the push to license the outdoor industry now means that paper qualifications are favored over experience, thus increasing risk; argue that riskless adventure is impossible and pointless; and suggest returning to the real outdoors, rather than attempting to develop watered-down, imitation adventure…

Outdoor adventure is entering the marketplace and adopting marketplace values, resulting in commodification of the outdoors and commercialization of the adventure experience. This trend is a departure from values of the social movement that gave rise to the field and threatens to disempower participants and dissociate them from their experience of…

Adventure education has its own set of unique questions that help to define what it is and how it differs from other fields of education. Adventure education has grown rapidly over the past several decades, and with its evolution, many critical topics for deliberation have emerged. This book contains 15 chapters, each arranged in a debate format…

Highlights theories and concepts concerning gender and gender relations in modern society, applying some of these perspectives to outdoor education and adventure recreation. Argues that the more recent interactionist theories and cultural studies offer less deterministic and more insightful approaches to exploring people's outdoor and adventure…

Reflects on some persistent models of outdoor adventure that limit the ability to truly address social justice issues. These taken-for-granted assumptions include the valuing of individuality, physical risk, and physical prowess; emphasis on the wilderness experience, despite its high cost; and focus on valuing diversity without deeply examining a…

The director of an outdoor education center for children with disabilities (Bendrigg Trust, England) discusses the center's work, effects of the Cairngorm tragedy and recent licensing requirements as lessening the adventure aspect of outdoor education, qualities of good outdoor educators, freelance instructors versus full-time staff, the use of…

Creativity is valued increasingly in business and education. Humor, fun, and play take the brain from a cognitive, rule-bound state to a more fluid state where the whole body can work on a problem while the "thinking mind" is relaxed. Vignettes demonstrate how adventure education stimulates creativity through play, fun, humor, and…

Adventure education addresses moral development in powerful ways. Facilitators modeling moral behavior and framing questions to address moral issues can affect the moral development of participants. Empathy, which is associated with moral development, grows quickly when group members support each other taking risks on challenge courses. Cognitive…

This paper advocates the potentials of "sweat lodge" rituals for adventure education programs. Historically, rituals and ceremonies have been instrumental in passing major philosophical and sociological paradigms from one generation to the next. However, there is little theory and research about how ritual and ceremony results in the…