Adolescent girls: Inner motivational resources and adventure education

This study investigated the educational climate facing adolescent girls through the traditional school's formal and evaded curriculum. In both curricular areas adolescent girls were found to be experiencing academic and developmental losses, losses categorized motivationally-speaking as a shortage of Inner Motivational Resources. Adventure Education was proposed as a potential Comprehensive School Reform intervention that could help reverse these losses and increase adolescent girls' cache of these Resources.; To investigate this proposal, an Observant Participation study was executed on a purposely-sampled Adventure Education program---a 17-day Outward Bound Canada Connecting with Courage wilderness-based course. Observant Participation methodology required the researcher to once again "become" a 14 year-old girl and participate alongside ten other 13 and 14 year-old girls so as to study their "collective perspective" on the course---the collective problems they actually faced and their collective thoughts, feelings, and actions regarding these problems.; Throughout this 17-day period, the researcher did everything the girls did. In the process, the researcher also collected over 400 hours of participant observation field notes, 13 hours of interview transcripts, and 4 writing samples.; All of these data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Method of Qualitative Analysis, using a response cut-off criterion to separate individual girl's perspectives from the group's "collective perspective". The study's collective findings indicated that the course provided the girls with a Courageous and Authentic Experience of Self, a Self established through repeated opportunities for Challenge, Competency, Control, Connections, and Accomplishment.; Methodologically, the study showcases the effectiveness of the Observant Participation methodology to access the perspective and often missing "voice" of adolescent girls. Theoretically, the study presents a new model for building a Courageous and Authentic Self in adolescent girls, highlighting the importance of action opportunities for Challenge, Competency, Control, Connection, and, especially, Accomplishment in the attainment of Inner Motivational Resources. Practically, the study advances a Comprehensive School Reform program called C.A.E.S. that transfers the essential elements of the model of a Courageous and Authentic Experience of Self from the wilderness setting to the setting of a school.