The transition from adolescence to adulthood represents a crucial juncture of change for young people. It is a period when a combination of factors, including family and friendship interactions, education, and employment, can have powerful and enduring impact on a young person’s future. A young person’s capability to make informed decisions that enables them to overcome obstacles and pursue opportunities is underpinned by their own resilience. Psychological resilience constitutes a range of learned positive adaptive behaviours which enable young people to combat stress, bounce-back from adversity and follow a trajectory of growth.
Building resilience is most effective when learned through progressive exposure to uncertainty and risk. Such strength-based learning constitutes adaptations to the physical, psychological and social capabilities of individuals promoted through ‘challenge-by choice’ (CBC) philosophies. CBC provides opportunities for participants to make personalised judgements of risk-taking based upon their own perception of capabilities.
Contemporary programmes in Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) advocate the use of supported risk-taking between educator and learner and between learners to generate positive outcomes and derive deeper meanings. Deeply satisfying adventurous experiences which place healthy demands on human functioning creates a broader frame of reference of acquired skill sets that may be called upon later in future challenging situations.
As a positive psychologist and Head of Impact and Learning at Inspiring Learning, I’m invested in developing evidence-based practices for building better adaptive capabilities of young people in key transitional periods of their lives.
In the aftermath of Covid-19, a unique collaborative research opportunity came about in the Winter of 2023 to evidence the impact of an OAE residential on over 600 adolescents’ resilience and psychological well-being. Conducted by Kingswood (Inspiring Learning), Sheffield Hallam University, and the government’s National Citizen Service (NCS), the Live It programme aimed to build resilience and the soft skills of creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking – all vital for supporting the effective transitions of young people into education and employment.
The programme enabled a diverse range of youngsters to explore their inner strengths, look at problems from different perspectives, engage in the wider world and negotiate with others to decide the best course of action. Embodying challenges in an outdoor environment with real-world contexts encouraged young people to re-adjust, grow, and persevere.
From below average starting points (possibly due to their limited social interactions during the pandemic) these experiences were able to increase young people’s perceptions of their resilience and psychological wellbeing by 36% and 23% respectively. Four in every five youngsters reported being more confident in meeting new people and feeling more positive towards people from different backgrounds to themselves. 70% felt more confident about their education or job prospects. Over three quarters of them saw more opportunities than they realised following the programme. Importantly, these increases resonated one month later. The camp-based experiences which were highlighted by young people as most important for building resilience included mastering new skills, solving problems, and being inspired by nature and the outdoors.
Responding directly to the psychosocial problems and vocational needs of adolescents, this research exemplified the power of collaborative outdoor learning as an efficacious mechanism for delivering personal and collective growth. The unique blend of adventure and vocational real-life experiences provided creative, innovative learning opportunities to allow many young people to begin to understand themselves and choices they can make in their transition to adulthood.
More on this topic...
More on this topic and further research can be found in the peer-reviewed Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning. Download here.
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* Brymer et al., Citation2021; Engemann et al., Citation2019; Greenwood & Gatersleben, Citation2016; Marselle et al., Citation2015; Mutz & Maller, Citation2016; Van Dijk-Wesselius et al., Citation2020; Ward et al., Citation2016).
This blog post was written by:
Dr John Allan, Head of Impact and Learning, Inspiring Learning, and Visiting Fellow, Sheffield Hallam University.
John Allan PhD is an established academic and outdoor practitioner. He is Head of Learning and Impact at Inspiring Learning one of the UK’s foremost providers of adventure education for young people which includes Kingswood and Skern Lodge. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. John’s area of expertise centres on positive psychology, strength-based learning, and resilience building. His research outputs have included international and national journal publications, book chapters, keynote addresses, conference symposiums, presentations and on-line teaching and learning packages.
