A review of the Comfort zone: Model or Metaphor by Mike Brown.
I have chosen to review the comfort zone model by Brown (2008) as it has been a prominent feature in my learning throughout my years of being involved in outdoor education centres. As I participated in different adventure sports I believed that if you were not pushing your limits then you were not learning and I believed this to be true for my students (see figure 1 below). However, as I have become older and more reflective my philosophy has evolved in regards to my own capabilities of learning and in particular my teaching of students. The comfort zone model is based upon the belief that when an individual is placed outside of their comfort zone and placed into a stressful environment that this will induce change and growth shall occur (Brown, 2008). I personally believe this idea is ok if you wish to apply it to yourself, however, when outdoor instructors begin to apply it to participants they are teaching, by elevating a sense of risk they could possibly be doing more harm than good (Davis-Berman & Berman 2002). I have since adopted a soft skills approach to my teaching rather than pushing students out of their comfort zone but instead facilitating learning through a medium of trust and what the students wish to do.
The notion that an instructor can create this false sense of risk in order to expose a student and bring out this inner being within them that will flourish and grow is rather ridiculous due to instructors not being adequately trained in this area (Brown, 2008). Particularly if a student may have a history of mental health for example, then how could an instructor with no training in that field encourage a student to take more risks when they are already unstable. I believe that both instructors and facilitators of adventure programs should look to change their ways of inducing growth. Rather than loading participants with a heightened sense of risk and anxiety, they should facilitate learning in a safe and controlled manner where students learn at their own pace and where they feel comfortable.
Outdoor educators appear to have adopted Piaget (1977) theory of cognitive functions by creating a disequilibrium in order to create a stimulus-response that stress will equate to learning. If this disequilibrium is too great however it is believed that the student will not absorb any information or skills and they may only believe that they completed the task by luck or the support of others (Brown, 2008)
In coherence with Brown (2008), the comfort zone model should be left as a metaphor about how to describe how we may think about growth rather than a method used for dubious teaching. Teaching more focused on fostering safety and security for participants where they feel better able to attempt tasks and in a less stressful environment should be adopted. Effective learning will come from trust between instructor and participant with the learning process being more gradual and not one monumental moment.
I would recommend reading Positive Psychology and Outdoor Education by Davis-Berman & Berman (2005) This paper discusses the comfort zone model further and offers other styles of teaching such as flow state that may be more beneficial to the learning of participants on adventure programs.
References
Berman, D. S., & Davis-Berman, J. (2005). Positive Psychology and Outdoor Education. Journal of Experiential Education, 28(1), 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590502800104
Brown, M. (2008). Comfort Zone: Model or metaphor? Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 12(1), 3–12.
Davis-Berman, J., & Berman, D. (2002). Risk and anxiety in adventure programming. Journal of Experiential Education, 25(2), 305-310.
Panicucci, J. (2007). Cornerstones of adventure education. In D. Prouty, J. Panicucci & R. Collinson (Eds.), Adventure education: Theory and applications (pp. 33-48). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought (A. Rosin, Trans.). New York: Viking Press
Comments
Post a Comment