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Outdoor Education Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Outdoor Education

Students’ Meaning-Making Journeys Towards Self-Authorship Through Self-Designed Gap Year Experiences, Erin Garcia Dec 2020

Students’ Meaning-Making Journeys Towards Self-Authorship Through Self-Designed Gap Year Experiences, Erin Garcia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological, qualitative study addressed student perceptions of their meaning-making process towards self-authorship in a self-designed gap year experience and was conducted in a public higher educational institution in the Southeast. Data was gathered through interviews from a purposeful sample of gap year program participants and program administrators. Emerging themes and categories were identified by coding and analyzing the interview data, such as continual reflection reinforces the value of individual meaning-making, self-expectations versus self-worth, the influence of societal expectations are minimized, and self-designed learning helps to solidify changes in self-authorship. The data showed a strong connection between multiple meaning-making contexts …


Adolescent Adventures In Geology: Impacts Of Geoscience-Focused Stem Education Combined With Recreation Activities On Adolescents’ Perceived Self-Efficacy, Lauren Janowicz Jan 2020

Adolescent Adventures In Geology: Impacts Of Geoscience-Focused Stem Education Combined With Recreation Activities On Adolescents’ Perceived Self-Efficacy, Lauren Janowicz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Quality, informal learning techniques combined with outdoor adventure recreation, or adventure STEM programming, is a potentially powerful complement to and extension of formal education (Fu et al., 2015). To address this underexplored field, West Virginia University (WVU) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) partnered to create a geology STEM, outdoor adventure recreation camp. This thesis research project employed qualitative directed content analysis to examine the potential impacts of this adventure STEM program on participants’ perceptions of their outdoor recreation (OR) self-efficacy (Bandura, 1994; Mittelstaedt et al., 2009). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 adolescent participants with an average age …