The school trip: Travellingwith, not to or from

The school trip is relatively under-researched. In the present study the aim was to explore 14–15 year-old children's reasons and motivations for going on such a trip. In the first part of the study, a Norwegian school class (25 children) was surveyed some four months prior to departure concerning their motives for travelling and activities they wanted to engage in while on the school trip. In the second part of the study, the children were interviewed while they were on the trip, while the final data was collected some 4 weeks after the children had returned home. The most prevalent theme observed in these children regarding the school trip was a social being together motive (“doing things together”). Further norm governed motives including responding to school demands concerning learning, utilitarian motives including punishment avoidance, reward and getting away from school, and finally pull motives referring to a wish to gather experiences were also observed. Concerning activities, our informants most frequently referred to fantasies about social activities, some of them of an extreme nature such as mountain climbing, rafting and other sports activities. Even though this study was explorative, the results imply that the main reasons children give for the school trip can be described as travelling with, more than travelling to or from.