Adventure Education: Impact on Team Building, Trust and Cooperation (MEPD article)

Abstract

Physical education class has started. The students are moving and competing in the day?s planned activity. Students are learning the specifics of the activity/sport and are improving their fitness levels. Sounds like everything is going fine, right? Well, not exactly! Some students are reluctant to participate out of fear that they are not good enough or will fail. Others may not be capable of performing at the same level as their peers, may have a poor self-esteem, or may learn better through affective learning as compared to intellectual learning. There is an abundance of factors that play into a class running smoothly and the students gaining from the class experience. These are some of the challenges faced by physical education teachers. Throughout my 18 years of teaching physical education and coaching, I have encountered all of these challenges and more, as well as the rewards that accompany teaching. Entering this school year, I reflected on past teaching experiences and my personal beliefs and philosophies for the classroom, asking myself how I might improve. I was hoping to find activities that were less competitive, more cooperative, and more fitting to the needs of all my students, thus decreasing the daily challenges each of them faces, yet giving them something that would benefit them throughout their life, in addition to being fit. Solas (1992) suggests that teachers and students have particular views of the teaching and learning process, which inform and shape what transpires when they are engaged in the process. Exploring how educational theories relate to the teacher and students? behaviors within a typical classroom helps us to understand our teaching, and make it more context-specific and realistic.