Best Practices

A few weeks ago, we published Part 1 of this series, which covers what we here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) view as the trending best practices to know about in outdoor and adventure-based experiential education. 

• Here, in Part 2 of this series, we introduce you to Restorative Practices, and share how they’re incorporated in the programming here at NCOAE.

• For Part 3, we will shift our attention to Trauma-Informed Learning.

• And we’ll wrap up the series in Part 4 with a discussion on Stewardship.

At NCOAE we recognize the power of the outdoors and how it can shape the lives of those who participate in our outdoor education courses and wilderness medicine  trainings. Take a backcountry teen expedition for example. By experiencing hiking, climbing and paddling, we see physical obstacles turn into (more…)

A little more than three decades ago, two educators and researchers from Canada partnered with the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) on a groundbreaking book titled Safety Practices in Adventure Programming. 

Simon Priest, Ph.D., and Tim Dixon, M.Ed., regarded at the time as among only a handful of leading experts in outdoor adventure education and leadership, penned what some argue was the first widely-published best practices for the outdoor education and adventure programming industry. 

Known as the Red Book, due to its bright red cover, their work coincided with AEE’s foray into accreditation, inspiring outdoor education program administrators across the globe to adopt common approaches to the safety and well-being of their clients and staff while facilitating adventure-based programs. 

And while it likely isn’t fair to suggest that best practices didn’t exist within our sector of the outdoor industry before Priest and Dixon’s Red Book, the publication of that forward-looking guidance saw the rapid adoption of such practices for our sector like no other. Fast-forward 33 years, and we find most all outdoor education or adventure-based programming operations pay close attention to best practices in the realm of safety and risk management. 

In today’s post, I’m pleased to call attention to four areas with associated best practices for which all outdoor educators and adventure-based organizations should be aware. After hearing from college and university outdoor program managers, organizational leaders, and by performing research of our own, four themes rise to the top as trends and best practices in outdoor education and adventure programming to follow over the next year: (more…)