Training school administrators to be more effective leaders through Missouri's Outdoor Leadership Experience is a unique concept that has been in place since 1987. Many other fields have used outdoor experiences for leadership training. This qualitative study discusses participants' perceptions of their experience and how it has impacted their…

This chapter considers outdoor leadership in higher education with specific consideration as to how upper- and middle-class values continue to influence accepted norms and assumptions related to skill development and leadership learning. Suggested approaches to make outdoor programs more class-conscious and inclusive are provided.

American summer camps employ over one million individuals every summer. However, little research has been conducted evaluating the experiences and outcomes for the camp staff. In particular, research efforts have done little to examine the subset of staff members working in formal leadership positions at summer camps. Often college-aged emerging…

Recent leadership research has demonstrated a need for better understanding the process of becominga leader because it might be qualitatively different to being a leader. If so, there is likely to be a need for pedagogies designed deliberately to support first-time outdoor leadership experiences and any such pedagogies must be informed by the…

The outdoor leadership field is maturing in its understanding of activity safety and objective measures of risk exposure. Patterns of injury, relative exposure between related activities, and risk profiles per user group are only just beginning to accumulate academic findings from which a collective understanding of managing adventure-based risk…

Ecologists have long theorized about humans' psychological relationship to the natural world. The importance of feeling connected to nature is a theme in the writing of ecologists (Leopold, 1949; Orr, 1994; Roszak, 1995). They have argued that this connection to nature is a key component of fostering ecological behavior. In a meta-analysis of the…

The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of the proposed Outdoor Leader Career Development Model (OLCDM) through the development of the Outdoor Leader Career Development Inventory (OLCDI). I assessed the reliability and validity of the OLCDI through exploratory factor analysis, principal component analysis, and varimax rotation, based…

My research, exploring the theories and practices of facilitator educators, led me to ask questions about some potential gaps in outdoor leadership texts published in the last six years. Do the authors and editors of these texts focus on the things that are really important to the effective practice of outdoor leadership? My research with…

With the plethora of MBA leadership courses, schools are examining ways to differentiate their programs and to provide tangible learning outcomes. MBA graduates want the knowledge skills and ability to make them successful in their chosen fields of endeavor. This paper outlines one holistic experiential MBA leadership course that challenges the…

Using means-end theory, this study evaluates how being part of a group influences outcomes of National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) participants. This study examines outcomes from NOLS courses during the summer of 2006 in the Wind River Mountain Range of Wyoming. Immediately following 2006 course completion, a convenience sample of 345…

This article is a call for research to be conducted on how to adequately design and evaluate outdoor leader preparation programs (Sugerman, 1999). The profession of outdoor leadership has been slow to examine effective ways of assessing the development of student knowledge, disposition, and performance that inform instructional practice and…

This basic interpretive qualitative research study explored the personal and professional backgrounds, training experiences, perspectives, and perceptions held by adult volunteers serving as crew advisors in the Venturing program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Venturing is the BSA's adventure oriented youth development program for coeds age…

Research on leadership in outdoor adventure programs has focused primarily on Educational and Outdoor Skills. Anecdotal and practical experience has suggested that the performance of highly effective leaders may depend instead on distinctive qualities and components closely tied to individual character--a perspective of transformational…

This study examined the leadership development of MBA students enrolled in an Organizational Behavior course. Students enrolled in either an in-class section or a section that included an intensive, outdoor training component called Leadership on the Edge. Results from Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Practices Inventory (2003) showed that students…

Transfer of learning from adventure programs remains of critical interest to adventure education professionals. Although some research has investigated what transfers, notably less has focused on mechanisms that might influence transfer. This paper explores the mechanisms of transfer reported by a stratified random sample of National Outdoor…