Faculty of Education - Theses

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Author: Shaw, Simon G × End date: 2008 × Start date: 2004 × Subject: Psychological aspects ×

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    The management of wilderness experiences and anxiety in an environmental studies program
    Shaw, Simon G ( 2004)
    In contemporary outdoor education research, little attention is given to emotion and mood state. Little is known about the effect of anxiety upon the individual in a wilderness setting, and the effect of anxiety on the ability for an outdoor and environmental studies program to achieve set learning objectives. Considering that outdoor and environmental studies field trips provide the notion of learning as holistic and situational, anxiety has the capacity to play a crucial role. Focused on university undergraduate students' experiences of a five-day bush walk on the Overland Track in Tasmania, Australia, this study examines the affect that anxiety has on their ability to achieve the stated learning objectives of a field trip that forms a core learning experience in an outdoor and environmental studies subject. The study initially focused on a group of eight students undertaking the bush walk to identify anxiety levels and the origins of their anxiety. The students could then be classified into two groups, from each of which one participant was selected to conduct a comparative ethnographic case study. The study drew on both quantitative data collected through the use of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and qualitative data collected through participant observation, interviews and analysis of daily student journal entries. Results indicate that the degree of state-anxiety experienced by participants was directly related to their trait-anxiety and was consistent with Abraham Maslow's (1987) hierarchy of needs. Despite fluctuations in levels of state-anxiety, students were still able to achieve the set learning objectives providing these needs were fulfilled. Whilst social and psychological objectives can be attended to from the commencement of a field trip, students will not feel a drive to attain self-actualisation until their physiological, safety, belongingness and self-esteem needs have been fulfilled. Anxiety therefore must be monitored, and the nature of the anxiety must be attended to so that students can fulfill these needs and progress to cognitive development through self-actualisation.