Contextual Transfer


In my last blog, I discussed learners engaging in experiences and how it can have a positive effect on them personally and socially. Experience has been the basis of a large volume of theories from philosophers such as John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Jerome Butler (Hopkins & Putnam, 1993).  We as adventure educators base a large volume of our work on creating experiences for individuals who we believe will grow from the experience and change positively. The strength of experiential learning comes from its placement in the activity, however, for transfer to occur it is essentially a matter of how interwoven knowledge is to the context in which it is acquired (Brown, 2009). It is the belief that an individual will elicit certain traits from experiences that they will later hold onto and transfer over into their normal lives. However, this assumption is very difficult to prove. Scrutton and Beames (2015) discuss the aspect of personal and social development (PSD) and how outdoor adventure programs claim to be beneficial towards this through the theory of transfer. The truth is though that the research that outdoor providers claim to be using is potentially unreliable and the review by Scrutton and Beames (2015) eludes to this further. They call for studies of PSD to be more rigorous in regard to their standardisation from the questionnaires, lack of control groups, over-reliance on inferior statistical measures and time before and after the intervention. These discrepancies in the testing leaves outdoor providers coming under scrutiny from others in related disciplines as there are too many variables in the work to date.  

Where to from here, now that our claims appear to be up in the air? I believe well-structured adventure programs are essential in helping participants foster both the hard skills and soft skills which they could potentially use later in life. Consideration could be taken for the benefit of the social aspect between peers participating in adventure programs. When they participate cumulatively together in challenging settings and can together relate that back to their own lives and communities, the learning may then focus on personal qualities (English Outdoor Council, 2015). For adventure programs that I aim to deliver in the future,  I aim to consider the opinions and aspirations of those participating in future programs – in order to create an environment that is more conducive to fostering effective PSD. Students will be allowed to be the masters of their own learning with a large amount of responsibility placed on them with regard to their personal goals along with the considerations of others on the program (English Outdoor Council 2015). This I believe will be beneficial to further developing soft skills in participants that they can adapt and use in their own lives and communities
For interested parties, I would recommend reading 


Martin, B., & Wagstaff, M. (2018). Controversial issues in adventure programming. Human Kinetics


References

Brown, M. (2009). Reconceptualising outdoor adventure education : Activity in search of an appropriate theory ., 13(2), 3–13.
Brown, M. (2010). Transfer:Outdoor Adventure education’s Achilles heel? Changing participation as a viable option. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 14(1), 13–22.
English Outdoor Council. (2015). High Quality Outdoor Learning.
Hopkins, D., & Putnam, R. (1993). Personal Growth Through Adventure. In Personal Growth Through Adventure (Routledge, pp. 3–19). New York: David Fulton.

Scrutton, R., & Beames, S. (2015). Measuring the Unmeasurable: Upholding Rigor in Quantitative Studies of Personal and Social Development in Outdoor Adventure Education. Journal of Experiential Education, 38(1), 8–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825913514730

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