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Environmental Sciences

Research in Outdoor Education

Camp experience

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Quality Youth Development And The Camp Experience: Results From A Program Improvement Process, M. Deborah Bialeschki Jan 2008

Quality Youth Development And The Camp Experience: Results From A Program Improvement Process, M. Deborah Bialeschki

Research in Outdoor Education

Many camp professionals find themselves challenged by their funders, boards, and parents to address the issue of quality of the experiences they offer to youth. Within the larger youth development community, this issue Is receiving critical attention with more evaluations including an assessment of program quality and incorporating setting-level measures in their designs. At the practice level, organizations are looking for tools to help document effective practice and allow practitioners to assess, ·reflect on, and improve their programs (Yohalem, Wilson­Ahlstrom, Fischer, & Shinn, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a program improvement process the …


An Evaluation Of The Impact Of A One-Week Summer Camp Experience On Participants' Social Skill Development, Paul Shirilla, Michael Gass, Chris Conlon Jan 2008

An Evaluation Of The Impact Of A One-Week Summer Camp Experience On Participants' Social Skill Development, Paul Shirilla, Michael Gass, Chris Conlon

Research in Outdoor Education

Social skill development is emerging as an important issue for educators and practitioners in their work with adolescent youth. Within the summer camp industry, youth development researchers are beginning to focus more intentionally on the ability of summer camp programming to develop social skill capacity among its participants (Thurber, Scanlin, Scheuler, & Henderson, 2007). While research in camp settings has been occurring for several decades, much of the inquiry has been descriptive in nature (Henderson, Thurber, Scanlin, & Bialeschki, 2007) or focused on individual psychological traits such as self-esteem and self-concept.(Gillis & Speelman, 2007). More recently, however, social skill development …


The Program Development Process: Developing Optimal Youth Development Environments Through The Camp Experience, M. Deborah Bialeschki, Margery M. Scanlin, Michelle Alberti Gambone, Cynthia L. Sipe Jan 2006

The Program Development Process: Developing Optimal Youth Development Environments Through The Camp Experience, M. Deborah Bialeschki, Margery M. Scanlin, Michelle Alberti Gambone, Cynthia L. Sipe

Research in Outdoor Education

Many camp professionals find themselves continually challenged to document the value of the camp experience for youth. Funders want to hold camps accountable to their goals, boards want to see evidence that camp programs result in benefits in line with the organization's mission, and directors themselves want to know if they achieved the desired outcomes as well the most effective "best practices". The American Camp Association (ACA) teamed with Youth Development Strategies, Inc. (YDSI) in a project to look at how campers assessed their camp experiences on outcomes that contribute to positive youth development. The purpose of this study was …


Development And Application Of A Camper Growth Index (Cgi-C), Karla A. Henderson, Christopher A. Thurber, Leslie Schueler Whitaker, Margery M. Scanlin, M. Deborah Bialeschki Jan 2006

Development And Application Of A Camper Growth Index (Cgi-C), Karla A. Henderson, Christopher A. Thurber, Leslie Schueler Whitaker, Margery M. Scanlin, M. Deborah Bialeschki

Research in Outdoor Education

Many people know about the value of organized camp experiences for youth, but few instruments measure camp experiences relative to positive youth development. Over the past century, most studies have found positive outcomes on a variety of dimensions, but these studies have used mainly convenience nonrandornized samples, different criteria, and a variety of instruments in their assessments. The purpose of this paper is to present evidence about the psychometric properties of a scale specifically designed to measure youth development outcomes through camp experiences.