This essay proposes that stress has been misused in traditional adventure education and presents a new model of risk taking based on the literature on stress and feminist perspectives in adventure education. Proponents of the traditional adventure perspective state that the intentional use of stress is central to the change process in wilderness…

A model to explain the adventure experience and to relate adventure experience to adventure education uses risk and competence as diagram axes with experimentation/exploration, adventure, peak adventure, misadventure, and disaster/devastation completing the framework. The model assumes that peak adventure, the point at which personal competence…