Considering Students' Experiences in Diverse Groups

Outdoor adventure education (OAE) spaces are historically white and privileged. Through a social justice lens, if we, as OAE providers, believe that all people should have access to OAE experiences, one potential remedy to access barriers may be the provision of scholarships to students from lower socioeconomic status. This would increase diversity, broadly conceived, on OAE courses which would, in turn, affect group interactions. But in what ways? Through sociometric measures (social network analysis) as well as interviews, this exploratory study sought to describe the experiences of students on OAE courses composed of different numbers of students receiving full scholarships. Challenges of integrating students receiving scholarships into existing OAE program structures are discussed, and programmatic modifications are considered.