Outdoor education camp and group cohesion: an investigation in the teacher education institute of Malaysia

Abstract

The study seeks to investigate the effect of outdoor education camp toward group cohesion among second year undergraduate teacher trainees from selected Teacher Education Institutes of Malaysia. A pre-test and post-test approach with non-equivalent control group was utilised among 350 second year undergraduate teacher trainees from four selected campuses. A modified version of Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) was used to gather data from pre-test and post-test. Results from MANCOVA procedures suggested that the camp had positively improved the group cohesion aspects of the experimental group with significant gain in ATG-T, ATG-S, GI-T and GI-S. Furthermore, results also highlight the improvement of group outcome aspects (GI-T and GI-S) which surpassed individual aspects (ATG-T and ATG-S). Overall, the results of this study showed that outdoor education improves teacher trainees’ group cohesion.

Keywords: outdoor education; cohesion; teacher; adventure