Adventure-based counseling in schools

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2001 by J. Scott Glass, Marie F. Shoffner

Each year school counselors are faced with the similar situation of getting new classes of students to work together as a group. Due to class size and time constraints, school counselors often must work with groups of young people, rather than working with individual students. Counselors engage students in cooperative learning activities that provide an environment where they participate freely (McGreal, 1989), while learning from and about each other (Jules, 1991). This type of group environment can be especially critical for pre-adolescents and adolescents because of the increasingly important role that peers play in their lives.

Experiential counseling techniques such as adventure-based counseling incorporate structured group activities that focus on cooperation and increase adolescents' interpersonal skills and self-esteem (Moote & Wodarski, 1997), which are common goals of school counseling programs (Nassar-McMillan & Cashwell, 1997). Although family functioning is recognized as influencing the self-esteem of children (Briggs, 1975; Cashwell, 1995; Kawash & Kozeluk, 1990), counselors also implement school-based efforts to affect the self-esteem of young people. Much of this work occurs in a group counseling environment because of the importance of the peer group for young people (Nassar-McMillan & Cashwell, 1997). Belonging to a group can be an important step in the improvement of a child's self-esteem. Research has shown that self-esteem of young people is improved when group interventions are activity oriented (Page & Chandler, 1994).

One of the key factors in the development of a group is cohesiveness (Griffin & Pennscott, 1991). Evans and Jarvis (1980) suggested that group cohesion is an important variable for a variety of groups and different types of group processes. Some social scientists deem cohesion the most important small group variable (Golembiewski, 1962; Lott & Lott, 1965) due to its usefulness as a mediator of group formation, maintenance, and productivity (Bollen & Hoyle, 1990). In addition, it has been found that cohesion is a necessary precondition for successful group experience (Stockton & Hulse, 1981). Creating an atmosphere of cohesion among students in a classroom may help later when the group is asked to work together on various tasks. Methods for facilitating cohesiveness in the classrooms are critical for school counselors, and adventure-based counseling activities can provide one such method. Adventure-based counseling typically uses experiential education in an outdoor setting with the goal of increasing participants' self-esteem, trust in others, and positive risk-taking behaviors (Harris, Mealy, Matthews, Lucas, & Moczygemba, 1993).

Adventure-based counseling has grown in popularity in both the private and public sectors. Uses include serving as an aid in rehabilitating juvenile delinquents, a form of therapy for individuals and families in crisis, a method for promoting growth for persons with disabilities, and a motivational team-building technique for corporate professionals (Harris et al., 1993; Herbert, 1996). The authors of this article, which examines adventure-based counseling in a school environment, believe that the usefulness of experiencing personal growth and cohesiveness extends to the classroom setting. In addition to a description of adventure-based counseling, examples of sessions are included with explanations of activities and processing questions which illustrate the usefulness of adventure-based counseling for school counselors.

Adventure-Based Coupling

Adventure-based counseling uses noncompetitive tasks and depends upon group interaction for completion (Nassar-McMillan & Cashwell, 1997). There are several significant aspects to tasks used in adventure-based approaches. They occur in a group setting using novel, noncompetitive activities and are designed so that success cannot be reached individually (Wick, Wick, & Peterson, 1997). The sequence of activities uses readily available equipment and typically progresses from easy exercises through tasks that are more physically and mentally challenging (Alexander & Carlson, 1999). The activities used build upon one another and increase in difficulty so that the group is consistently challenged. This requires the students to improve their social skills and abilities to work together in order to successfully complete the activities. After each activity is completed, it is crucial that the school counselor take an appropriate amount of time to process the experience with the group members, so the participants are able to relate the activity to problems they are currently facing or to draw metaphors from their experience (Harris et al., 1993). Adventure-based approaches can easily be incorporated into classroom and small-group school activities in counseling or in teaching (Nassar-McMillan & Cashwell 1997).

Many of the classroom and small-group skills taught as part of a developmental comprehensive counseling program are aspects of life-skill programs and are inherent to adventure-based approaches (Moote & Wodarski, 1997). Skills such as cooperation, communication, problem solving, and decision making are learned and practiced in adventure-based counseling. Programs using adventure-based counseling allow group members to become aware of the perspectives of others and incorporate this information into the decision-making process by working as a team on a common goal. In addition, these activities foster caring, trust, and tolerance (Alexander & Carlson, 1999) and, therefore, may be useful in reducing violence and increasing prosocial skills and behaviors.