Negotiating social support in therapeutic adventure education programs

Adventure recreation pursuits can be used as a vehicle for educational growth through a phenomenon known as adventure education (Priest, 1986). The historical development of adventure education stems back centuries with the greatest growth beginning in the 1940s with the development of Outward Bound in the United Kingdom (Raiola & O'Keefe, 1999). While originally conceived of as a tool for personal growth (Sakoffs, 1988), adventure education practices have been spun off into therapeutic applications as well. Such adventure therapy programs use adventure recreation pursuits as one aspect of the therapeutic milieu.