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Expeditionary Education
Expeditionary education is often associated with adventure education, outdoor education, environmental education, or experiential education and refers specifically to learning associated with exploration and journey-based experiences or expeditions within these fields. Usually involving elements of challenge, adventure, and leadership, expeditionary education can take place in a variety of settings including wilderness, classrooms, and even virtual spaces (the internet). Participants in expeditionary education can be directly involved in the expedition, or may be linked to expeditions undertaken by others.

Definitions
Webster's online dictionary defines expeditionary as "of, relating to, or being an expedition." Expeditionary education is of, relating to, or being an expedition within an educational framework. Expeditionary education may be mistakenly defined as a subset of or synonymous to outdoor education, adventure education, or experiential education. While many expeditionary education programs of, or being an expedition could be defined under these existing fields (such as Outward Bound, or NOLS), educational programs relating to expeditions may take place in the classroom and not outside, requiring adventure, or experiential in nature are becomming more prevalent as explorers and expedition based researchers strive to connect educational content to thier projects.

Related Disiplines
experiential education

adventure education

outdoor education

environmental education

environmental studies

Summary of Program Types
Expeditionary education can be:

1. An educational expedition one participates in (Programs of or being expeditionary education).

2. An expedition with educational agendas of various involvment levels for non-expedition members (Programs relating to expeditions).

History
The origins of expeditionary education could be thought to extend far back into early human history through hunting and gathering expeditions where traditional ecological knowledge was learned. Potentially one of the first formal applications of expeditionary education were the field trips conducted through Henry David Thoreau and his brother John's Concord MA grammar schhol in 1838. Later in the 19th century a summer camping movement was established in response to anxieties about urban and industrial influences on children. During this time, expeditions into "nature" were combined with informal educational persuits. Scouting, a movement started in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powell iniatiated widespead development of practical outdoor skills which often incorporated expeditionary componets like camping, backpacking, and canoeing and has grown to 38 million members in 216 countries 100 years after its inception. By the late 20th century expeditions were being used as educational vehicles by many private and public sector groups and has grown into large groups such as outward bound, serving over 200,000 students in 2006 and National Outdoor Leadership School who have trained over 120,000 people. Various contemporary groups and programs are discussed in

Psychology and Philosophy
Expedition as a mode of educational persuit has its theoritical and applied roots in many soils. Many people, theories, and practices can be identified as influential.

People
Kurt Hahn: Founder of the Gordonstoun school and outward bound

Willi Unsoeld: Facillitator of outdoor, experiential, and expeditionary education

Paul Petzoldt: Founder of the National Outdoor Leadership School

Will Steger: Artic Explorer and educator

John Dewey: Philosopher, educational reformer and proponent of experiential learning

Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, surveyor, writer.

John Muir: Philosopher, naturalist, conservationist, inventor writer and wilderness traveller.

Theories
Experiential education theories

group development theories

The outward bound process model

Stress, optimal arousal, comfort zone, and Flow (psychology) theories

Psychoevolutionary theory and the Biophilia hypothesis

Research
Research has been conducted on various aspects of expeditionary education. Correlations between a controlled exposure to challenge and psychological resiliency have been found by researchers James Neill and Katica Dias in their study of young adult Outward Bound participants. In a review of 150 research studies conducted between 1993 and 2003, general findings of positive impacts from outdoor learing In another meta analysis, focus areas such as self concept, leadership, and communications skills were shown to have positive gains during the educational experience, and in contrast to many educational interventions, significant ongoing gains in follow up reviews. While these and other studies point to positive results, the difficulty of drawing causality between psychologically gained elements and these programs in empirically based studies exist in the number of variables to control for and the strength of experimental designs.

Resources
The Outdoor Education Research and Evaluation Webpage

Programs Of and Being Expeditionary Education
http://www.elschools.org Outward Bound Expeditionary Learning Schools

http://www.salish.org Science Expedition in Puget Sound

http://www.iwls.com/courses/cascades.html International Wilderness Leadership School

http://www.lesley.edu/gsass/audubon/index.html Lesley’s Audobon Expedition Institute

http://www.projectexploration.org/sereno-dinosaur-expedition.htm Paleontology expeditions

http://www.oceanicsociety.org Natural History Expeditions with Oceanic Society

http://www.earthwatch.org/aboutus/education/edopp/edfelfund Teacher education fellowships with Earthwatch expeditions http://www.expeditions.com/Education514.asp expeditions for teachers and kids from Galapagos to learn EE from National Geographic

Educational Programs Related To Expeditions
http://www.explorapoles.org International Polar Foundation

http://www.globalwarming101.com Education interactive with expeditions in the Artic

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/modules/welcome.html NOAA

http://seagrant.wisc.edu/digitalgreatlakes/ A geography companion to the children's book Paddle To The Sea with Google Earth. Note: you need google earth to run this link.

http://www.polarhusky.com "adventure learning" connected to Artic expeditions

http://www.hawaiianatolls.org/research/NWHIED2005/index.php Hawaiian Island Tolls Ed Expedition

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lewis-clark/ A standards based guide for the Lewis and Clarke Expedition from the governments National Archives

http://www.seaofcortez.org/seaofcortez_teach.html Satellite/Expedition Research in the Sea of Cortez

http://www.jason.org/public/home.aspx Virtual Expeditions with the JASON project

http://128.125.202.141/pmwiki-2.1.27/pmwiki.php Some schools ask a Antarctic research vessel some questions and do some stuff on their own