Regarding Roger's comments
"There is another tradition in adventure education where participants create
and manage their own adventures and have far more active and responsible
roles in the whole process of learning."

I thought this was an interesting observation.  The firewalking example
seems to be at the other end of a continuum where the facilitator is 'king'
, where people apparently develop self belief and confidence as a
consequence of  an artificial experience which is skilfully reviewed.

Is it possible that at this end of the continuum that adventure/development
education could 'deschool' the participants.....that it could deny them the
belief that they can develop personally and socially without the guiding
hand of the skilled facilitator.  Have people begun to acquire needs for
education/development in the personal and social realm that were dealt with
less explicitly in the past?  Is there any law of diminishing returns with
regard to the increasing aspects of personal development that can be
addressed by adventure or development 'programmes'.  Is there a possibility
that adventure educationalists are trying to programme and institutionalise
the natural development process.

Stephen Hannon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Greenaway" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: do this and you can do anything


> Robert - I am delighted to see you joining in with some fresh and
> challenging thoughts. You say that you prefer 'fine focus' to
> 'broad brush' and that you are dissatisfied with 'just opinion'.
> So I was surprised to find you writing:
>
> > I agree that many (but not all) adventure models are overly
> simplistic and
> > are virtually "no brainers" (virtually useless/meaningless).
>
> But I did find your 'fine focus' on Nadler and Luckner's model
> and on comfort zone theories very interesting. In my own research
> (with participants on outdoor management development courses) I
> did find a number of examples (and one in particular) of people
> who stayed within their comfort zones but put in a lot of effort
> and got a lot of value from their course. I think facilitators
> and researchers and theories/models need to recognise and work
> with variation and diversity and many different ways of learning.
>
> Back to firewalking ... This seems to me to be a classic example
> of one model fits all. There is a ready made script with only
> minor variations allowed or considered. Do people leave
> firewalking experiences (and other strongly frontloaded
> adventures) with the official storyline - or are there
> alternative voices and murmurings and feelings of discomfort
> after the experience (even from those who experienced no physical
> pain?).
>
> For such adventures to work, participants not only have to walk
> the coals - they also have to believe the official storyline that
> goes with it.
>
> My understanding of adventure education/training is that one of
> its key benefits over other forms of learning is that it is real.
> Yes there is a real consequence if you get your feet burned. But
> as a learning experience it is only successful if you believe the
> official explanation i.e. if you go along with the pretence that
> the real reason that you succeeded was due to some amazing feat
> (sorry) of mind over matter.
>
> This is a very strange mixture of real and pretend. The actual
> reasons why people end up walking the coals may be more to do
> with group pressure (going along with the crowd) or company
> pressure (going along with authority) or just wanting to step out
> of character for a few strange seconds.
>
> There is another tradition in adventure education where
> participants create and manage their own adventures and have far
> more active and responsible roles in the whole process of
> learning. A group that plans, organises and carries out their own
> adventurous journey may come to believe ''if we can do this, we
> can do anything''. Again it is a belief, but firmly rooted in the
> realities of their journey together and not dependent on
> believing pseudoscientific explanations of 'mind over matter' .
>
> Where is there a theory/model of adventure learning that allows
> us to distinguish between fire-walking and hill-walking?
>
> I am delighted that my original firewalking message has sparked
> (sorry) so much interest - but where new threads develop, please
> feel free to start a new subject line at the top of your message.
> There is also a risk that some of the 195 members of this list
> may think that 'do this and you can do anything' is 'spam'.
>
> Just back from a real adventure racing through Scottish bog in
> the pouring rain. Maybe there are some firewalkers out there who
> know that they can ''do anything'' - including choosing not to
> race in mud, but could they resist the peer pressure?
>
> Roger
>
> Roger Greenaway
> Reviewing Skills Training
> [log in to unmask]
> http://reviewing.co.uk
>
>