In the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkit, outdoor (adventure) learning has its own entry. But there is one striking omission: no average effect size is reported. Why?
The reason is simple. The evidence linking outdoor adventure learning to academic achievement remains very limited. The few available studies generally report positive findings, but there simply is not enough robust evidence to calculate a reliable average effect.
So it is encouraging that a new large-scale British study has examined what actually happens when children return from a residential week, an outdoor programme or another adventure learning experience. Does anything remain once ordinary lessons resume on Monday morning?
Transfer
Ultimately, this is another transfer question. And transfer has been one of education’s most persistent challenges for well over a century. We see it with study skills, executive functions, critical thinking and collaborative learning. Skills that are clearly visible in one setting often prove remarkably difficult to transfer spontaneously to another. It would be surprising if adventure learning were somehow immune to that challenge, although you never know.
This brings us to the new large-scale British study by Ben Willis and Sarah Reaney-Wood. Rather than simply asking whether adventure learning can work, they also examined whether any benefits remained once pupils had returned to their normal school environment. As you may have guessed, the answer is nuanced.
Two forms of adventure learning
For clarity, adventure learning is much more than an outdoor excursion. In this study, it refers to challenging activities in which pupils work together, solve problems, take responsibility and explicitly reflect afterwards on what they have learned.
The researchers compared two approaches.
The first was the traditional residential programme: several days at an outdoor centre with activities such as climbing, kayaking, hiking, orienteering and structured reflection sessions.
The second took place entirely at school. Pupils remained on the school site but spent several days completing challenging missions built around a fictional national emergency, with collaboration, leadership and problem solving at the heart of the activities.
How was it studied?
This was an impressive cluster randomised controlled trial involving no fewer than 97 schools across the United Kingdom. The participants were 11- and 12-year-old pupils identified by their schools as experiencing social, emotional or behavioural difficulties. That detail matters when interpreting the findings.
The pupils were assigned to one of three groups:
- a residential outdoor programme;
- a school-based adventure learning programme;
- a control group.
The researchers measured several outcomes, including:
- self-regulation;
- school engagement;
- behavioural difficulties;
- prosocial behaviour.
Measurements were collected before the intervention, immediately afterwards and again eight months later. The study also included an extensive qualitative component consisting of classroom observations, interviews and focus groups with both pupils and teachers to better understand why certain outcomes emerged.
Unfortunately, academic achievement was not measured. However, as you will see, the findings suggest that any long-term impact on attainment might well be limited.
The short-term effects
Like many earlier studies, this one found positive effects immediately after the intervention. Pupils reported better self-regulation and higher levels of school engagement. Interestingly, the school-based programme performed slightly better than the residential programme on self-regulation.
The qualitative findings were perhaps even more interesting. Many teachers described how they felt they had rediscovered certain pupils. Young people who were often seen in class as disengaged or disruptive showed leadership, took responsibility and spontaneously supported classmates during the activities.
The residential programme also strengthened relationships between pupils and teachers. Spending several days together while tackling shared challenges changed how they viewed one another. Nor should we underestimate the importance of the informal moments they shared, something that also emerged in my own research. Months later, pupils still talked about conversations during walks or around the campfire. Teachers reported that they continued to see some pupils differently after the programme.
Eight months later…
This is where the picture becomes less encouraging. Most of the immediate gains did not fully last.
The improvements in self-regulation largely disappeared. Effects that were clearly visible immediately after the programme were no longer statistically significant eight months later. School engagement still showed a small positive effect, and behavioural difficulties had declined slightly compared with the control group. However, the striking transformation that seemed so evident immediately after the intervention had largely faded.
Why?
The researchers do not blame the quality of the programmes. Instead, they return to the issue I started this blog with: transfer.
During the programmes, pupils worked intensively on collaboration, confidence and self-regulation. But once they returned to school, most simply fell back into their familiar routines. Many schools had no clear plan for building on the experiences pupils had gained. Once again, we encounter the limitations of a one-off project week that is only loosely connected to everyday school life.
Some teachers continued to refer to the experience (“Remember when you thought you would never make it up that mountain?”), but these efforts were usually limited to individual teachers rather than being part of a whole-school approach. Only a handful of schools organised meaningful follow-up activities or deliberately continued to build on what had started during the intervention.
For that reason, the authors describe their findings as a “(semi)cautionary tale”. Adventure learning can certainly work, but without a deliberate transfer strategy many of its benefits will gradually disappear.
What have we learned?
In many ways, this is not new. But it is worth repeating.
New skills rarely transfer automatically to a different context. They require repeated practice, preferably across multiple settings.
If we want pupils to demonstrate greater self-regulation, collaboration and responsibility in their everyday lessons, we need to revisit and practise those skills explicitly within normal classroom life. Powerful learning experiences may be memorable, but memorable is rarely enough if we never return to them afterwards.