Teaching evaluations and reflective practice: Strategies for improving teaching skills in adventure education

Abstract

There is a shortage of evidence-based research on evaluation of teaching skills of adventure educators. Although program and instructor assessments are regularly used, there is limited documentation as to the methods employed to design them. Incomplete theoretical conceptions about the role of the instructor and how students learn may account for the lack of research on instructional evaluation in adventure education. The authors suggest that adventure education assessments put more focus on evaluation of teaching strategies by incorporating theories of reflective practice. The goal is to improve outdoor pedagogy using a mutually supportive debriefing format. The authors provide a summary of four themes (evaluation methods, opportunities for individual and shared debriefing as reflective practice, the role of feedback in student learning, and adaptive expertise), based on recent research, which can contribute to a future model of reflective practice for adventure education.