Adventure educators must elevate participants' experience beyond a parade in the environment. Innovative right-brain strategies that can be used before, during, and after the encounter to capture the wonder of the "natural moment" include visualization, sensitizing, treating flora and fauna as celebrities, thematic photography, the mind…

Moving active learning forward calls for a focus on learners' actorship, not program activities, and requires distinguishing between active learning and active teaching. Experiential education offers an alternative to didactic approaches, not a more attractive form of it. Accepting traditional principles and procedures of…

Anecdotes about adventure experiences illustrate how an "artist"-facilitator seamlessly applies scientific methods while in the moment to best enhance student learning. Adventure educators can be artists by creatively framing, constructing, and debriefing the experience while not being central to the experience themselves, thereby…

Participant responsibility in outdoor education programs is placed on a continuum from passenger status through participant and partner to practitioner. Corresponding leader roles are directive, coaching, supporting, and delegating. The disempowering effects of the passenger approach to risk management and the value of teaching a group to manage…

An outdoor trip leader reflects on the outdoor leader's role and responsibilities and on three qualities that set outdoor education programs apart from recreational programs: they promote continued self-directed learning; encourage reflection on the experience, both through structured activities and the creation of conditions conducive to…

All providers of outdoor leadership training must cooperate in introducing race, gender, and class issues in their programs. Recommendations include using experiential methodologies, offering social justice training in all training venues, developing outdoor leadership texts that cover social justice topics, and making social justice training a…

Presents a model of four levels of experience in training adventure education leaders: direct instruction, student interaction in class, technical skill development, and internships. Internships allow students to think for themselves and solve real-world problems while experiencing teaching on their own. Utilizing all levels increases student…

Through anecdotes, a female outdoor educator highlights the importance of role-modeling gender equality, but also suggests a need to explore the cultural assumptions behind sexual roles; what is served by them; and the social mechanisms that reinforce them, such as homophobia. Educational strategies to help women gain and claim competence in the…