The Benefits of Wilderness Sports and Adventure Education

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Adventure Education can be defined in many ways. I feel that Adventure Education is a direct, active, and engaging learning experience that involve the whole person and have real consequences. What I get from this definition is that students are active, always involved, while they learn from new experiences that can have real consequences like getting hurt. Another way to define it is the promotion of learning through adventure centered experiences, for example, outdoor sports, challenge courses and races. When teaching Adventure Education there are many skills and concepts that are applied with the lesson, but more importantly, there needs to be a base understanding of where adventure education originates from.
Wilderness Sports and Adventure Education has been growing in Physical Education classes across the nation. It all started in the 1940’s where the natural environment was used for youth development programs. An example of this would be boy scouts. They used orienteering, like using a map and compass, to navigate from point A to point B. A huge leap in history of wilderness sport and adventure education was Project Adventure. This program took Adventure Education away from the orienteering and remodeled it, and introduced ropes courses, and challenge courses. It kept the environment involved but made it a little more physically challenging for students. Project Adventure mission is to expand Adventure-based experiential programing, with a goal of developing responsible individuals, productive organization and sustainable communities.
There are many skills and concepts that are cohesive with Adventure education. They vary from improvement of physical fitness of students through unique outdoor sports all the way to creati...

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...district cannot afford having your own rock wall or ropes course, look into companies that bring their own equipment. Also you look in surrounding towns and see if you may take a field trip to local ropes course.

Bibliography
1) Prouty , Dick , Jane Panicucci, and Rufus Collinson . Adventure Education: Theory and Application . Project Adventure , 2007 . 3-225. Print.
2) Indiana University School of Public Health , . "Bradford Woods ." Adventure Education Cirriculum and Activity . 1-23. Print. .
3) "About Us ." Project Adventure. Project Adventure , n.d. Web. 2 Oct 2013. .
4) "Outdoor & Adventure Education Programs (OAEP)." Association for Experimental Education . Association for Experimental Education, n.d. Web. 2 Oct 2013. .

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