Urban Middle Schoolers’ Experiences of an Outdoor Adventure Education Program to Facilitate Social and Emotional Development
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22045166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cian L Brown (0000-0003-0837-0295, University of Oklahoma, corresponding author), Benjamin C Heddy (0000-0003-2564-653X, University of Oklahoma), Kanvarbir S Gill (0000-0002-4545-1759, University of Oklahoma), Jakob Gowell (University of Oklahoma), Alison C Koenka (0000-0001-9360-5241, University of Oklahoma) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 841 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Education Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/educsci15070841 |
| OpenAlex | W4411961837 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 92 |
Middle school students face significant transitions and often do not receive education on important social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. To address this issue, we investigated how middle school students experience an outdoor adventure education program focused on SEL development. Nine students from an urban public charter school participated in the ROVER program, which taught the following SEL skills: resilience, risk management, self-efficacy, self-regulation, and emotion regulation. Students then applied these concepts through adventure sports and were instructed to translate the lessons to their home and school lives. Students completed weekly reflections to explore how students experienced this piloted program. A Structure Tabular-Thematic Analysis (ST-TA) approach was used to investigate thematic coding of reflections. Prominent themes uncovered across the reflections were emotion regulation, experience intensity, social influences, resilience, and self-preservation. We describe program implementation and discuss how using adventure sports after-school programs can impact urban middle school students’ SEL skills development. Implications suggest potential benefits of directly teaching and applying SEL competencies
Adventure · Adventure Education · Developmental psychology · Emotional development · Mathematics education · Outdoor education · Pedagogy · Political science · Social change · Social emotional learning · Computer Science · Diverse Educational Innovations Studies · Outdoor and Experiential Education · Psychology · Youth Development and Social Support
What is Resilience?
Perseverant grit and self-efficacy
SEL Interventions in Early Childhood
Sources of Self-Efficacy in School
Promoting Self-Regulation in Science Education
Motivation Interventions in Education
Negative Effects of Traditional Middle Schools on Students' Motivation
The Relation Between Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Achievement Across Childhood and Adolescence
Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health
Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
Influencing Children's Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulation of Reading and Writing Through Modeling
“Plays Nice With Others”
The Explanatory and Predictive Scope of Self-Efficacy Theory
Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology
Diversity in Outdoor Education
A Meta-Analytic Review of Preschool Social and Emotional Learning Interventions
Conducting thematic analysis on brief texts
What we know, and what we need to find out about universal, school-based social and emotional learning programs for children and adolescents
Resilience and Regulation of Emotions in Adolescents
Happiness is best kept stable
Effects of After-School Programs with At-Risk Youth on Attendance and Externalizing Behaviors
Psychological correlates of university students' academic performance
Let's hang out!”
Early Adolescents’ Adjustment at School
Sociodemographic Moderators of Middle School Transition Effects on Academic Achievement
Low-achieving adolescent students' perspectives on their interactions with classmates. An exploratory study to inform the implementation of a social emotional learning program in prevocational education
A Meta‐Analysis of After‐School Programs That Seek to Promote Personal and Social Skills in Children and Adolescents
The Impact of the Project K Youth Development Program on Self-Efficacy
Promoting a Positive Middle School Transition
Traditional Masculinity During the Middle School Transition
The roles of social–emotional skills in students’ academic and life success
Emotion Regulation
The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning
Professional Role Confidence and Gendered Persistence in Engineering
Positive interventions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |