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By Richard Leblanc, York University, Ontario

This article appeared in The Teaching Professor after Professor Leblanc
won a Seymous Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence including a $10,000 cash award.

Suggested games and activities to help new groups break the ice and feel more comfortable.

Communication is an essential skill utilized by any teacher. It is important to be a culturally competent communicator. It is also important to identify the belief systems of both the student and teacher to spot blocks to communication.

Accurately assessing your students' developmental state can direct your planning and impel your teaching. This document looks at different teaching techniques and what situations they are most effective.

What is yoga and why should you practice it? The what part of that question is thousands of years old. The why is as easy as here and now. Practicing yoga for as little as an hour a week will bring benefit into every area of your life. 

This proceedings includes 16 papers presented at the 1991 International Conference on Outdoor Recreation (Moscow, Idaho). The papers are:

(1) "Special Populations Outdoor Pursuits: Tapping the Ability in Disability" (Allen Adler);
(2) "An Investigation of the Ecological and Social Impacts Caused by Rock Climbers" (Aram Attarian);
(3) "Why Johnny Can't Cooperate: Cognitive Development and the Concept of 'Adequateness'" (Jim Fullerton and Sue Wells);
(4) "An Experiential Model for Teaching Skills" (Steven P. Guthrie);
(5) "An Examination of the Safety Review" (John R. Kascenska);
(6) "Building Community To Strengthen, Grow, and Revitalize Your Outdoor Program" (Steve Leonoudakis);
(7) "Developing a College Outing Program" (Roland McNutt);
(8) "An Overview of North American Experience-Based Training and Development" (Todd Miner);
(9) "Experience-Based Training and Development: Getting Started" (Todd Miner);
(10) "Outdoor Recreation Liability: Preparing for the Threat" (James H. Moss);
(11) "Paperwork: It Destroys Trees, It Takes Up Space and Maybe Necessary To Prevent Lawsuits" (James H. Moss);
(12) "Kayak Teaching Techniques" (Dana Olson-Elle);
(13) "A New Theory for Outdoor Leadership" (Simon Priest);
(14) "Competition Climbing: An Overview of the History and Organization of Rock Climbing Competitions" (Scott Tyson);
(15) "Some Observations on the Management of Outdoor Programs" (Ron Watters); and (16) "The Top Rental Items for University Outdoor Programs and Effective Buying Techniques" (David J. Webb).

Also included are the conference schedule, biographical information on presenters, listings of conference participants and steering committee members, and an income/expense statement for the conference. (LP)

This essay proposes that stress has been misused in traditional adventure education and presents a new model of risk taking based on the literature on stress and feminist perspectives in adventure education.

Proponents of the traditional adventure perspective state that the intentional use of stress is central to the change process in wilderness therapy, and that raising stress by exaggerating the level of risk sets the stage for a potentially transformative experience.

On the other hand, practitioners working from a feminist perspective seek to minimize stress, engage in dialogue about risk, and promote personal power and choice in order to create the necessary conditions to encourage "authentic risk taking" and facilitate "eustress" (psychologically beneficial stress).

Eustress is not dependent on task completion but rather, is manifested through an individual's subjective experience. The nine conditions promoting eustress include self-awareness, self-determination, and taking pleasure in the success of coping activities. The negative outcomes of stress far outweigh its benefits and may be long-term.

The seven elements of a model for promoting eustress in adventure education are presented through a narrative about a woman participating in a 3-day canoe outing. These elements are: seeing each individual as the beginning point, preparing for risk taking, entering into a novel setting, allowing choice, supporting authentic risk taking, evaluating experience, and seeing the individual as the ending point.

Contains 33 references. (SV)

This study explores how high school students learn from their experiences in an extracurricular adventure program and illustrates how students' narrative inquiries relate to experiential learning.

Twelve canoe trips were studied by participant observation methods. Data were collected from recorded interviews with students and staff, field notes, film and video recordings.

Observations suggest that students' stories serve five educational functions; that is, they serve:

(1) to authenticate the experience;
(2) to interpret the experience;
(3) to call attention to relationships;
(4) to transmit cultural lore; and
(5) to influence outsiders.

Further analysis of the stories indicated that story-telling is a natural process involving spontaneous meaning construction and reconstruction over time to account for new experiences. The paper includes examples of students' stories that illustrate the educational functions of story telling.

This study suggests that stories serve important purposes in learning and teaching and that story telling occupies middle ground between the extremes of formally structured class discussions and leaving the experiences to speak for themselves.

A collection of tips and games to help remember your students names.

Values can collide when members of different generations work and learn together. Having a better understanding of others can make the working and learning environment more productive.

In the United Kingdom, outdoor educators have varied backgrounds in terms of academic versus professional outdoor training, and the profession has not agreed upon required qualifications. Multiple influences in the historical development of outdoor education have contributed to this situation. Since the 1970s, several U.K. colleges and universities have offered degree courses for outdoor educators. Such courses must address not only academic and technical skills training, but also the need to develop educators' professionalism and sound judgment. Moray House Institute of Education (Scotland), now part of the University of Edinburgh, has addressed this issue. Since its inception in 1972, Moray's outdoor education degree evolved from a Diploma to a Postgraduate Diploma, which was subsequently modularized, and now a Postgraduate Certificate-Diploma-Master's pathway is available. The program draws upon outdoor activities to enhance environmental education and personal and social development, all within a framework of safe professional practice. A practical, experiential approach is emphasized. The following program areas are described: academic modules; a competency program covering technical skills, instructional skills, planning and organizational skills, and sound judgment; and extended study and dissertation required at the master's level. (SV)