Black Box Theory of Outdoor Education
What makes outdoor education "work"? What makes outdoor education "not
work"? What are the critical (or causal) nuts and bolts of outdoor
education programs?
It is unhelpful to clump all aspects of outdoor education into a
Black Box that supposedly "just works". Likewise, its unhelpful to consider all forms of outdoor education as
inherently worthless.
 The solution is
that we need to invest more deeply in analysis of
theory and research about outdoor education to try to uncover more of the
mystery of the black box.
A theory is a proposed explanation for how a phenomenon operates or
functions.
A good theory should make its assumptions clear and lead to testable
predictions. Good theory should also be able to account for the rich and
varied reality of different people's experiences.
Weak theories for the potential value of outdoor education are
mostly used e.g., "its good for them because life's too easy these
days", "no pain, no gain" or "being in nature is wonderful". Likewise, weak theories against
outdoor education are often used e.g., "too expensive", "takes too much
time", "not worth the risk", "too hard", etc. Can we do better?
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