Developing a Growth Mindset through outdoor personal development: can an intervention underpinned by psychology increase the impact of an outdoor learning course for young people?

ABSTRACT

This study considers the impact of using a series of Mindset interventions during a five-day outdoor personal development (OPD) course. Self-efficacy, resilience and Mindset were measured pre course, post course and one month post course. It was hypothesised that both experimental and control groups would increase their self-efficacy and resilience, and that the Mindset (experimental) group would significantly increase beyond the levels of the control group, who took part in the standard OPD course. It was also predicted that the Mindset group would move towards a Growth Mindset, whereas the control group would not show any change in Mindset. Hypotheses were tested using a randomised, quasi-experimental method. Separate mixed analyses of variance were carried out for each dependent variable, followed by planned comparisons and post-hoc tests using a Bonferroni correction. Results showed that both groups increased self-efficacy over time; however, there was no further significance for the experimental group. Resilience only increased significantly in the experimental group while the control group made no significant gain, and students in the experimental group moved significantly towards a Growth Mindset while the control group did not.

KEYWORDS:

• personal development
• positive psychology
• resilience
• Mindset
• self-efficacy

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the involvement of The Outward Bound Trust and the three schools who agreed to participate.

Much appreciation also goes to Tim Lomas from The University of East London whose support and guidance throughout has been invaluable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. OPD is used throughout to highlight focus upon outdoor courses which have the explicit aim of providing personal development outcomes. This may also be referred to as outdoor education, outdoor learning or adventure education in other literature.

2. Mindset is a positive psychology theory. It will be given a capital throughout to emphasise that it is the theory which is being referred to rather than a more generalised conception of the term.

3. Exact ages of the students are unknown because this information was not supplied.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate O’Brien

Kate O’Brien studied Outdoor Education in the Community at the University of Strathclyde, UK before working at a number of centres and programmes within the United Kingdom and abroad. She has worked in personal development for 15 years, with some time out to travel and pursue personal adventures. Kate recently completed a master’s in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of East London and is passionate about enhancing practice by implementing learning from this widely researched area. She is currently enjoying putting this into practice within her role as Senior Instructor at The Outward Bound Trust.

Tim Lomas

Tim Lomas is a lecturer at the University of East London, where he is the co-programme leader for the MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology. Tim completed his PhD at the University of Westminster in 2012, focusing on the impact of meditation on men’s mental health. He is the author of numerous books and papers, covering topics including mindfulness, Buddhism, gender, cross-cultural psychology, and neuroscience. His latest book, entitled The Positive Power of Negative Emotions will be published by Piatkus in Autumn 2016.