Proceedings of the 2009 northeastern recreation research symposium

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THE PERCEIVED IMPACT OF A UNIVERSITY OUTDOOR EDUCATION PROGRAM ON STUDENTS’ ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIORS Heather Boland University of Ottawa Paul Heintzman University of Ottawa Abstract.—Outdoor educators often seek to design programs that infl uence participants’ daily lifestyles, especially environmental behaviors. Research on the impact of outdoor education programs on environmental behaviors has typically focused on schoolchildren and teenagers. Th e purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived impact of a university outdoor education program on the environmental behaviors of program participants. In-depth interviews were conducted with six university students 6 months after they completed a 14-day summer outdoor education course that covered “social, organizational, technical, environmental and educational topics associated with group living, ecology and summer camping skills.” Almost all participants reported that the course had some impact on their environmental behaviors. Increased participation in outdoor activities, participation in communal environmental action, and environmental behavior transference to daily life were the most frequently mentioned changed behaviors. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Th e impact of outdoor education programs is of interest to experiential educators, recreation practitioners, and leisure researchers. Although outdoor education has many diff erent objectives, outdoor educators often seek to design programs that infl uence an individual’s daily lifestyle and especially environmental behaviors. Th e study presented in this paper was part of a larger study that investigated the perceived impact of a university outdoor education course on six university students’ environmental attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors. Th is paper focuses on the impact of the course on the students’ environmental behaviors. Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002) defi ne pro-environmental behavior as behavior “that consciously seeks to minimize the negative impact of one’s actions on the natural and built world” (p. 240). Research on the eff ects of outdoor education programs on environmental behaviors has tended to involve schoolchildren and teenagers. For example, Bogner (1998) found that for 6-months after a 5-day outdoor ecology education program, secondary school students were more willing to engage in environmentally sensitive behaviors. However, Palmberg and Kuru (2000) found that participation in outdoor education activities by elementary school children in Finland did not always lead to environmental actions. Th ese 11- and 12-year-old children most frequently mentioned concrete, local actions such as stopping littering and picking up litter. An Australian study of primary and secondary school environmental education programs found that some students demonstrated behavioral change outside of the learning environment (Ballantyne et al. 2001). Haluza-Delay (2001) discovered that teenage participants in a 12-day Canadian wilderness program expressed concern about the environment but stated that this concern did not translate into action at home. In a study more related to this current study, Freeman et al. (2005) examined a university outdoor education course and observed that the course changed some environmental behavior. 2.0 METHODS Th is study investigated the perceived impact of a secondyear outdoor education course off ered by a Canadian university during the summer of 2007. Th e bilingual (French and English) course was 14 days long and included a 3-hour indoor session to prepare the students for the trip portion of the course. According to the description, the course was designed to cover “social, organizational, technical, environmental and educational topics associated with group living, ecology and summer camping skills.” Proceedings of the 2009 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium GTR-NRS-P-66 31
A qualitative research design was used because of the small class size (20 students) and the research focus on the perceived course impacts. An email was sent to all students enrolled in the course inviting them to participate in the study. Eleven students requested more information; six students agreed to participate in the research. Th e sample size was limited because students were unavailable for interviews after the course and because the researcher was a unilingual Anglophone. Some of the Francophone students may have been more likely to participate if they could have been interviewed in French. Th e participants were interviewed 6 months after they had completed the outdoor education course. An interview script was used to ask participants to refl ect on whether the course infl uenced their environmental behaviors. Follow-up probe questions were asked to determine the relationships between specifi c course experiences and environmental behaviors (e.g., What, if any, aspects of the course positively changed your behavior in relation to the environment?). Th e interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Data analysis used the constant comparison technique (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Th is form of analysis involved reading, rereading, and coding the transcripts, and then comparing and grouping the coded material into themes and subthemes. To ensure that the interpretation of data was valid, the researcher had her academic supervisor review the transcripts to confi rm the themes. 2.1 Participants Four of the six participants were female and two were male. Only two interviewees, one male and one female, had previously participated in an outdoor education program (Table 1). Th e female had gone on several short outdoor trips during one academic year for high school physical education credit and the male had completed a 6-day outdoor course. One student was Francophone while the other fi ve were Anglophone. Th e participants are identifi ed in this paper with pseudonyms. 3.0 RESULTS In terms of the perceived impact of the course on environmental attitudes, all participants stated that Table 1.—Characteristics of participants Participants Age Gender Language Previous Outdoor Ed. Experience Abby 21 Female English No Brianne 22 Female English No Colin 27 Male French Yes Dave 22 Male English No Erin 22 Female English Yes Faye 21 Female English No their attitude towards the environment became more positive following the course. Even those who already had a positive attitude before the course reported an improvement in their environmental attitude. In particular, the 48-hour “solo” on the 11 th and 12 th nights of the course and the peacefulness that the students experienced in nature infl uenced changes in their environmental attitudes. Most knowledge gain was in the areas of personal survival skills (e.g., fi re building, navigation) and self-knowledge (e.g., confi dence). Qualitative data analysis of the interviews for this study found that almost all participants reported that the course had some infl uence on their environmental behaviors. Increased participation in outdoor activities, participation in communal environmental action, and environmental behavior transference to daily life were the main themes observed in the data. 3.1 Increased Participation in Outdoor Activities After completing the outdoor education course, several participants indicated that they had become more active outdoors through increased participation in activities such as whitewater rafting, kayaking, running, and canoeing. For instance, when asked about the long-term impacts of the course, Colin said: I’m going outdoors more than I did usually and I just bought my fi rst pair of hiking boots and each weekend I go into the woods for like 2 hours just to calm down and everything, because you know in the city you have to go very fast. Proceedings of the 2009 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium GTR-NRS-P-66 32
Page 1 and 2: United States Department of Agricul
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Page 5 and 6: OUTDOOR RECREATION—TRAILS Experie
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Page 9 and 10: diff erent points along the spectru
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Page 13 and 14: amount of bare rock. Camel’s Hump
Page 15 and 16: Larson, M. 2004. A Passive Approach
Page 17 and 18: THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION IN EXPERIEN
Page 19 and 20: Table 1.—Special places surveys L
Page 21 and 22: For some people, being in their spe
Page 23 and 24: CLIMATE CHANGE AND RESOURCE PLANNIN
Page 25 and 26: large geographical area (Fig. 1). T
Page 27 and 28: Divers seen = 4.4 Figure 2.—Norm
Page 29 and 30: Table 4.—Most-specialized divers
Page 31 and 32: Sarah Young Human Dimensions of Mar
Page 33 and 34: 3.0 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Th e FRR
Page 35 and 36: Table 4.—Divers’ perception of
Page 37: YOUTH AND OUTDOOR RECREATION
Page 41 and 42: containers, instead of plastic bags
Page 43 and 44: WALK, RIDE AND LEARN: STUDENTS’ D
Page 45 and 46: school. Because of the large sample
Page 47 and 48: Table 8.—Observation of built str
Page 49 and 50: “I’M TOO OLD TO GO OUTSIDE!”
Page 51 and 52: Mean Eco-Affinity Score 5.0 4.5 4.0
Page 53 and 54: children. In: Klenosky, David B., F
Page 55 and 56: Cherie LeBlanc Fisher U.S Forest Se
Page 57 and 58: Table 1.—Comparative statistics f
Page 59 and 60: did some fi shing himself at each s
Page 61 and 62: On the other hand, some personal kn
Page 63 and 64: Illinois Department of Natural Reso
Page 65 and 66: Consumer behavior researchers have
Page 67 and 68: 50 percent of the households were d
Page 69 and 70: y respondents indicated that these
Page 71 and 72: a bivariate approach (instead of th
Page 73 and 74: HERITAGE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN RUR
Page 75 and 76: Short cruise season. Th e river fre
Page 77 and 78: Lynda J. Sperazza, Ph.D. Recreation
Page 79 and 80: 2.3 Leisure Participation Values Re
Page 81 and 82: Dychtwald, K. 1999. Age power: How
Page 83 and 84: With all research, the research que
Page 85 and 86: comprehensive. Cross (2005) even ar
Page 87 and 88: Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma State Univ
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EXPERIENCE USE HISTORY AND ITS RELA
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Table 1.—Comparison of experience
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5.0 DISCUSSION As mentioned previou
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HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF WILDLIFE
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2.0 METHODS Data were collected at
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0 buses 4 buses 8 buses 12 buses Fi
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4.0 DISCUSSION Visitor surveys and
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LEISURE AND HEALTH
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Second, in a world where clean drin
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Table 1.—Importance of different
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Countries also need to be careful a
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Proceedings of the 2009 Northeaster
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Table 1.—Informant profi les Info
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do something and we might think it
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Th ese relational interactions enab
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EXPLORING ELEMENTS THAT INFLUENCE S
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trails, and asking others to stay o
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time/fi nances” in dune protectio
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In summary, this study explored the
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Jinhee Jun Texas A&M University jju
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Table 1.—Sample demographics Indi
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Grayson 1995). Th e fi t of this mo
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Stets, J.E.; Burke, P.J. 2003. A so
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Jiaying Lu Texas A& M University Ji
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Table 1.—Demographic and particip
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Table 3.—Factor analysis of motiv
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species sought, satisfaction, and r
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social nature within sense of place
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Table 1.—Descriptions of key info
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sharing the place with others and a
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Manzo, L.C. 2005. For better or wor
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NORMATIVE TOLERANCES FOR SCUBA DIVE
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neutral point. Bubbles at the top o
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Table 1.—Snorkeler evaluations of
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Davis, D.; Tisdell, C. 1995. Recrea
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William Valliere University of Verm
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��
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Manning, R. 2007. Parks and carryin
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mission is “...to promote and reg
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Figure 1.—Pedestrian walkway LOS
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Acceptability 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
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TOURISM TRENDS AND CHALLENGES
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the rankings of 12 attendance motiv
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Table 3.—Comparison of socio-econ
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Table 6.—Entertainment Seekers’
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PLACE MEANINGS
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Stedman (1999) posited that sense o
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points in a focus group session, Ne
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are not shared by current residents
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Ishwar Dhami Division of Forestry a
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Figure 2.—Model for the calculati
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Table 1.—Viewshed results for all
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land implies that planting vegetati
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Shafer, E.L.; Hamilton, J.F.; Schmi
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a setting’s ability to facilitate
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EUH Place Satisfaction Figure 1.—
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Table 4.—Regression coefficients
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Jőreskog, K.G.; Sőrbom, D. 2004.
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OUTDOOR RECREATION II
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Th e primary objective of the propo
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Question 10. Do you believe that SU
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Rodney B. Warnick Tom Stevens Unive
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Table 1.—Estimated visitation to
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Table 2.—Estimated national park
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For this section of the trend analy
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5.0 DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS, AND IM
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RECREATION TRAILS IN MAINE AND NEW
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Table 2.—Average cross-sectional
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Table 5.—The percentage of stream
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Demrow, C.C. 2002. Maine trails man
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Turner, J.M. 2002. From woodcraft t
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Chad P. Dawson, Professor State Uni
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80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Very diss
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Table 4.—The number of campers in
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Fuller, C.; Dawson, C. 1999. A comp
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Table 1.—Modal response rates Ini
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Smee, A.; Brennan, M. 2000. Electro
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Table 1.—Characteristics of parti
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Table 3.—Results of discriminant
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5.0 CITATIONS Babbie, E. 2001. Th e
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Bernardita Silva Graduate Assistant
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Table 1.—Expenditures by 2008 Ame
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6.0 CITATIONS Della Bitta, A.; Lond
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the economic impact of travel, and
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the air show. Th e second most popu
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not displace other local spending.
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6.0 CITATIONS Adams, P.D.; Parmente
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MANAGEMENT AND USE OF PARK, RECREAT
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which suggests that diff erent type
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Table 2.—Between-groups ANOVA to
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forest settings (means = 4.4 and 4.
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LEISURE RESEARCH
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communities together, and a decline
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Table 2.—Life satisfaction scale
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onds within a social group is a mec
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“I JUST WANTED TO GET AWAY”: AN
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Th e importance of “getting away
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Gerlach, J. 1989. Spring Break at P
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www.nrs.fs.fed.us The U.S. Departme
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