Outdoor and Experiential Learning – A Holistic and Creative Approach to Programme Design

Citation

Sayers, P. (2005), "Outdoor and Experiential Learning – A Holistic and Creative Approach to Programme Design", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 37 No. 6, pp. 320-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197850510617622

This book explains the way a particular approach to outdoor and experiential learning has been developed in the Czech and Slovak republics. Its origins go back to the communist era in Czechoslovakia, but have stood the test of time and adapted well to social change. The approach has been further developed during the 1990s and into the new millennium. The nearest equivalent in the Anglo‐Saxon world is Outward Bound. Some of the ideas presented in the book are already in use in Outward Bound centres.

The book comes with detailed explanations of the outdoor experiential learning exercises that are used at one institution, the Vacation School Lipnice. Participants are young people, but also include adults. The book is written in part by the developers of those exercises and by Andy Martin whose involvement with the school appears to be both professional and romantic.

The books starts with an historical overview of the development of the vacation school and its programmes, and how this work has become international and internationalised in the last fifteen years.

The main content of the book is an exposition of the theoretical framework that is used to design programmes. The term “dramaturgy” is used for this framework within which the outdoor work is linked to indoor exercises to form a week long programme that engages participants in a variety of ways. The authors give examples of a typical week's programme as run at the vacation school. The concept of dramaturgy links exercises to provide a theme or scenario that takes participants from one activity to another.

Exercises have been designed and categorised to stimulate and develop one or more of four aspects of learning: the social, the physical, the creative and the psychological/reflective. There is detailed explanation of six or seven exercises within each of these four categories. The exercises provide activities that require participants to play a role within a scenario requiring some dramatic expression. This engages students not only with the individual exercise but also with the process of learning and development they are designed to stimulate.

Many of the exercises have intriguing titles based on film or legend, e.g. “In the skin of John Malkovich”, “Triffids” and “Dead poets society”. Each has a clearly presented rationale as well as instructions and guidance for running them, such that it would be possible for readers wanting to develop their own outdoor programmes to take and adapt them with relative ease. The potential of these exercises would extend to management and leadership development, as well as to work with students and young people. It is also clear from the way these materials are presented in the book that there is a coherence to this approach which couldn't be recreated by taking individual exercises piecemeal.

The authors have managed to rise to the challenge of producing a book that is both an academic textbook and a manual – an academic account of their history and the theory of dramaturgy plus a compendium of exercises that you can use yourself. As such it will form a very useful contribution to the library of anyone involved or interested in an holistic approach to outdoor and experiential learning.