Adventure education

Adventure Education uses as the experiential groups -Experience in nature (forest, mountain, sea) to develop mainly around the personality and social skills. The main element is the adventure , a risky undertaking or an experience that is clearly different from everyday life . It's about leaving the familiar environment and social network to do something daring, where the outcome is uncertain.

Goal setting and meaning

Adventure education is not an end in itself. It is not intended for entertainment, but is a methodical measure in the sense of risk education , i.e. H. the ability to have a self-determined attitude and lifestyle.

The aim is the formation of the individual and social personality through the challenge of adventure, i.e. coping with unsafe, even dangerous situations. The aim is to get to know the respective physical, emotional and mental limits and to grow with the tasks set. It is about awakening and living out this subliminal need for exciting experiences in most children and adolescents.

Educational elements

What makes adventure so exciting for those involved is the encounter with fear, courage, risk and risk - as an individual and in a group.

Adventure education poses challenges that are experienced as risks. The participants react with fear and curiosity at the same time . The decisive factor is dealing with the conflicting feelings, bundling courage , overcoming fear, and taking risks . The aim is to convey experience and learn that it is worthwhile to try something new.

Which situation appears to be a challenge for a particular person depends on their life experience and the current circumstances. For a young child, petting a dog can seem dangerous, a trainer also pats his tigers. Crossing a board 20 cm wide is not difficult. But if it goes down steeply to the left and right and you are not free from vertigo, then yes. Anyone can say a few sentences, but it can be difficult in front of a large audience.

The methodical challenge for adventure educators is to offer challenges for each participant and for the group as a whole, which are a risk, which activate fear and courage and which can just about be successfully mastered. Everyone has to find the right level of risk for themselves. Skillful weighing up in the direction of a personal finding of meaning does not fall to anyone. It has to be done in small steps, e.g. B. via tests of courage , can be learned.

to form

Every constructively oriented venture can be used for adventure education. Tasks in the dark or blindfolded, challenges that the individual faces on their own, physical exertion at the limit of performance, unusual behavior in a group or in public are widespread. In addition, primarily nature sports such as climbing or sailing , survival training in nature , cave hiking , river rafting and other challenging activities are used. Increasingly, social challenges are also used, for example giving a speech or an impromptu theater in the pedestrian zone or the task of getting strangers to do something that they otherwise never do.

Institutions

The adventure playgrounds that were built in the 1960s / 70s have taken into account the socially neglected need for adventure opportunities and reserved spaces for children to do exciting things in the immediate vicinity. Climbing halls , high ropes courses and skating areas do the same for young people.

Adventure education has found a firm place in the educational concepts of the boy scout movement , the outward bound schools of Kurt Hahn or the Alpine Club work .

Adventure educational elements are also increasingly being implemented in general education schools , in free youth work and in training seminars for business executives.

Social importance and crisis

As the abundance of adventure activities of all kinds and the emergence of ever new wagnishaltiger sports ( Parkour , Tricking , paragliding acrobatics , etc.) and companies ( adventure travel , wilderness trekking , shark diving show, etc.), is the desire for suspenseful experience in our widely solidifying in security thinking society unbroken. Sociocritical scientists, however, point to counterproductive opposing development tendencies that have already arisen as a reaction to overly rigid social security requirements.

This is how the psychologist and venture researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz names a number of signs of a declining willingness and ability to take risks independently in Western societies:

• Ethical disorientation with material pursuit of profit and inadequate risk competence (banking crisis / manager crisis)
• The need for risk slides into destructive tests of courage ( S-Bahn surfing , balconing , theft of department stores , etc.)
• Dominance of fear of the dangers over the perception of the chances of making brave decisions
• Banishment of adventure from the living environment in artificially created, mostly commercially operated reserves ( high rope courses , climbing halls , amusement parks, etc.)
• Socially prescribed external responsibility for dangerous situations and offers ( TÜV-monitored adventure playgrounds , strict liability , event organizer liability , etc.)
• Favoring spectacular, but externally responsible adventure offers over less sensational, but self-designed and in their consequences carried out activities.

He points out that it is not the secured pseudo-adventure and the short-term kick usually associated with it , but only the adventure that follows ethical principles and is consciously carried out in its consequences, of educational value.

The left-liberal journalist and philosopher Richard D. Precht also states that the affluent Western citizen is sinking into security thinking and striving to preserve what has been achieved. At the 2013 mountaineering congress in Bressanone, he demanded that people break out of their stupor and set off in the direction of a courageous further development of personal and social living conditions through greater willingness to take risks. This call tends to follow the much-cited, but inconsequential call of the seventh German Federal President Roman Herzog , who in his famous Berlin speech on April 26, 1997 spoke of a “jolt” going through society and leading it to innovative action must shake up. His successor in office Horst Köhler commented ironically on the stagnating social situation in Germany on May 23, 2004: “Why are we still not getting the job done? Because we're all still waiting for it to happen! "

The freelance experiential education sees the extracurricular, the school pedagogy in the school area in a professionally operated early risk education decisive approaches for a reorientation of society, which, however, must be wanted and supported by the decision-makers.

literature

• JC Miles / S. Priest: Adventure Education . Pennsylvania 1990.
• Wolfram Schleske: Adventure, risk, risk in sport. Structure and meaning from an educational point of view . Schorndorf: Hofmann 1977.
• Martin Scholz: Adventure-Risk-Adventure. Orientations of meaning in sport . Hofmann, Schorndorf 2005, ISBN 3-7780-0151-5 .
• Karl Schwarz: Risk and adventure as educational means in short schools . In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 13 (1967).
• Teresa Segbers: Adventure Journey. Build experiences on excursions. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-643-13932-0 .
• Nadine Stumpf: Adventure in school sports. What children want and how they can be realized . Scientific thesis GHS. Karlsruhe 2001.
• Judith Völler: Adventure, risk and risk in elementary school sports. Experiential aspects . Scientific thesis GHS. Karlsruhe 1997.
• Siegbert A. Warwitz: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior. 2., ext. Ed., Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 .
• Siegbert A. Warwitz: Growing in Risk. From the contribution to your own development . In: Case-Word-Number 93 (2008) 25-37, ISSN  0949-6785 .
• Siegbert A. Warwitz: Is it worth taking a risk - Or do we prefer to let ourselves be adventurous? In: Magazin OutdoorWelten 1 (2014) pages 68 ff, ISSN  2193-2921 .

Single receipts

1. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Growing in the risk. From the contribution to your own development . In: Case-Word-Number 93 (2008) 25-37
2. ↑ Martin Scholz: Adventure-Risk-Adventure. Orientations of meaning in sport . Hofmann, Schorndorf 2005
3. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: How children dare to gain life . In: Ders .: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Attempts to explain cross-border behavior . 2., ext. Ed., Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 . Pp. 1-12
4. ↑ Nadine Stumpf: Adventure in school sports. What children want and how they can be realized . Knowledge GHS thesis. Karlsruhe 2001
5. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: The maturity exam , In: Freemen's World, Abenteuermagazin, Hamburg 4 (2015) pages 101 ff
6. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior. 2., ext. Ed., Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 .
7. ↑ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Is it worth taking a risk - Or do we prefer to let ourselves be adventurous? In: Magazin OutdoorWelten 1. 2014. Pages 68 ff
8. ↑ Report in: Magazin OutdoorWelten 1 (2014) page 130
9. ↑ JC Miles / S. Priest: Adventure Education . Pennsylvania 1990
10. ^ Judith Völler: Adventure, risk and risk in elementary school sports. Experiential aspects . Knowledge GHS thesis. Karlsruhe 1997