Promoting social skills through outdoor education and assessing its' effects

Abstract

Outdoor education is a holistic form of education which aids in overall wellbeing of adolescence, including academic, physical, emotional, social and psychology well being. The aim of this study was to see whether outdoor education promotes social skills and assess its effects on participants. Research sample comprised of 671 adolescence attending a five-day residential outdoor education program. Kolb's Cycle of Learning through Experience is used as the theoretical framework while the research framework is adapted from Carver's Outdoor Education Framework. Social skills measured are cooperative teamwork, leadership ability, and ability to cope with changes. Descriptive and inferential statistics used were t-test, Cohen's D, multiple analysis of variance, and post hoc test. The result showed that the outdoor programme had a significant influence for all the constructs involved in this study. Cohen's D showed that the treatment contributes greatly to leadership ability (60%), and ability to cope with changes (61%). Wilks' Lambda in multiple analysis of variance showed that the outdoor education module contributes significantly high F=30.78, p<0.05; Ή2=0.57 to changes in social skills. Analysis of variance showed that there is a retention period whereby the changes in social skills examined remain in the participants for a certain period of time. This retention of changes in social skills is significant for all factors studied which are cooperative teamwork, leadership ability, and ability to cope with changes.