Adventure Education

Adventure education is a field grounded in the idea that outdoor experience and challenge can be powerful tools for learning, personal development and community building. It draws on outdoor pursuits such as mountaineering, kayaking, climbing and wilderness navigation, but the discipline is not simply about technical skill in these activities. It asks what happens when people are placed in challenging natural environments and how that experience can be designed, facilitated and reflected upon to promote growth, resilience, teamwork and wellbeing.

Adventure education bridges the outdoors and the classroom, making it a naturally interdisciplinary field.

At the University of the Highlands and Islands, you will study adventure education in one of the most spectacular natural environments in Europe, where the landscapes that form the context for adventure and outdoor learning are close at hand. The programme runs for four years full time, and you will develop both the practical outdoor skills needed to work safely and competently in challenging environments and the educational, psychological and reflective understanding needed to facilitate learning within them. You will engage with theories of experiential learning, risk management, leadership and group dynamics, building the professional knowledge that adventure and outdoor education practitioners need.

UHI's distinctive geography makes it an unusual and valuable place to study this subject. Access to mountains, sea lochs, islands and wilderness areas is integral to the learning experience, and the communities and organisations that work with outdoor education are part of the environment you study within.

Graduates from adventure education programmes work as outdoor instructors, adventure education practitioners, youth workers, community development workers, and facilitators in therapeutic and educational settings. Schools, charities, outdoor centres, NHS trusts, local authorities and voluntary organisations all employ graduates with this combination of outdoor competence and educational understanding. Some graduates continue to postgraduate study in outdoor education, education more broadly, or psychology, while others move into leadership roles in the outdoor sector.