Class
Article
College
Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Abstract
Outdoor educational experiences are one of the ways that young people learn about and experience the benefits that are found in the outdoors. However, despite the benefits that outdoor educational experiences have to offer, many young people do not participate for one reason or another. These reasons are often rooted in issues of social injustice. One junior high school in the intermountain west has been taking a group of eighth-grade students on a week-long camping trip for more than fifty years. My qualitative grounded theory study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, I examined how one year’s trip (the Southern Utah Parks Trip) to several national and state parks in Utah affected the participating student’s perceptions of the outdoors, namely the areas visited, as well as their perceptions and attitudes toward outdoor educational experiences. In the second part of this study, I drew on my own experiences as a student participating in a camping trip at the same school in eighth-grade, as well as a teacher and trip leader several years later, with the intent of better understanding the above-mentioned affects, as well as the barriers and constraints some students at the school run into that block their participation in this trip. It is my hope that this research will better inform those of us involved in the trip, as well as other trips like it, in how to get more students, and more diversity, to participate in these amazing opportunities.
Start Date
4-9-2020 1:00 PM
End Date
4-9-2020 2:00 PM
Examining School Sponsored Outdoor Educational Experiences and How to Make Them More Inclusive
Outdoor educational experiences are one of the ways that young people learn about and experience the benefits that are found in the outdoors. However, despite the benefits that outdoor educational experiences have to offer, many young people do not participate for one reason or another. These reasons are often rooted in issues of social injustice. One junior high school in the intermountain west has been taking a group of eighth-grade students on a week-long camping trip for more than fifty years. My qualitative grounded theory study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, I examined how one year’s trip (the Southern Utah Parks Trip) to several national and state parks in Utah affected the participating student’s perceptions of the outdoors, namely the areas visited, as well as their perceptions and attitudes toward outdoor educational experiences. In the second part of this study, I drew on my own experiences as a student participating in a camping trip at the same school in eighth-grade, as well as a teacher and trip leader several years later, with the intent of better understanding the above-mentioned affects, as well as the barriers and constraints some students at the school run into that block their participation in this trip. It is my hope that this research will better inform those of us involved in the trip, as well as other trips like it, in how to get more students, and more diversity, to participate in these amazing opportunities.