Training in the outdoors

The use of the outdoors as a learning environment has become common currency, and not only for the young. Such experiential training combines both safety and risk, although providers promise that physical fitness, agility and strength are not prerequisites of such programmes. The challenge and the risk lie in pushing out the boundaries of the usual, trying out new behaviour, stepping out of the 'comfort zone' and stretching expectations.

Team-building and problem-solving are two of the techniques of training used. One programme for young managers, for example, involved a day-long journey by canoe along several miles of canal in the Midlands, followed by a cycle ride or walk to a particular village hall. Participants were given brief instruction in the paddling of the canoes, and staff popped up at points along the way to offer encouragement.

They did not mention that there were about 16 locks along the route; nor did they mention that canoes could not be taken through locks but had to be portaged (carried) around them. They also omitted to say that accommodation for the night was on the floor of the village hall. Stress was, in short, deliberately built into the exercise, as a way of forcing people to confront their reactions and, importantly, to cooperate with each other.

Another simple technique often used is to reverse or eliminate the hierarchies of title and status among participants. Junior staff are put in charge of, or on a par with directors and managers. Office and shop-floor workers are mixed up together. This breaks down barriers of habit and expectation. Such exercises pose logical, creative and physical tests. Success depends on using the talents and qualities of individual team members to achieve the best collective results.

Participants in outdoor training learn both hard skills, (such as rockclimbing and caving), and soft or life skills. Night walks, orienteering, bridge-building, mock rescues, raft-building and adventurous treasurehunts often feature in the programmes. The elements of experiential learning include observation, experimentation, feedback from others, exposure to new people, environments and challenges, and the inescapability of learning imposed by the course design.

Example is also a powerful impetus to achieving. I was once on a course paired with a 17-year-old called Andy. He declared himself 'sh*t-scared' to abseil down a cliff and eventually was persuaded to stand aside and let me go ahead of him. Next thing I knew, Andy was standing at the bottom of the cliff. Over lunch that day, he explained to the others that he wasn't going to let 'a bleeding book writer' do something and not dare to do it himself.

Reflection during or after action is a vital component of outdoor training - it acts as an aid to transferring personal and social gains such as confidence, trust and leadership and team skills directly to the workplace and, less directly, within the home environment. Doing this depends on the effectiveness of the debrief, which may include mentoring, the identification of lessons learned and thinking about factors at work that may obstruct or aid transfer. The trick is, as Peter Honey has written, is not to let the tail of adventure wag the clog of learning.

Younger outdoor trainees such as award candidates may be required to plan a route, allowing for contingencies and emergencies; to draw up a set of rules for living under canvas and travelling through the environment without damaging it; to devise a code of group conduct that includes supporting each other and speaking honestly but without inflicting hurt; and to make a risk assessment for an outdoor activity.

Key learning points
Outdoor education as a means of character-training evolved in modern times as an outlet for adventure which is often missing in our modern world. Outdoor training does not teach outdoor skills except in the most rudimentary way, but creates situations in which trainees can develop personally and socially.

The natural environment itself poses challenges of solitude, physical difficulty and hardship, stress, logistics and organisation. Increased mutual trust, confidence, leadership skills and team spirit are promised outcomes. The future of outdoor training is assured, provided its benefits are demonstrably transferable to the workplace and to everyday lives.

Humankind has had to meet the challenges of the outdoors for centuries. Only in recent times have we had to contrive such activities, which have ceased to be an integral part of everyone's lives. Modern life, especially in the West, scarcely satisfies the instinct for adventure, the wish to meet the tests offered by adversity and the desire to unite with others in an overarching common cause.

As with all forms of learning discussed in this article, the outdoors plays a lead role. Whether transiting from childhood to adolescence or leaping from one high rung of the job ladder to the next, the learner will find there is nothing to rival the challenges and the charms of nature.

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