Research & Publications

Position Paper

The pandemic’s significant and potentially long-term effects on youth mental health and wellbeing are now well documented, emphasizing the need for immediate and research-supported action. Help Me Out, our position paper released in June 2022, brings together research on how outdoor experiential learning can help youth build the resilience and social-emotional skills they’ll need to thrive in a rapidly-changing world.  In Help Me Out, we provide recommendations to support capacity building in the outdoor education sector, ensuring that all Canadian youth have access to high-quality outdoor education. Read the full report below.

Research & Publications

Journal of Education

The Outward Bound Canada Journal of Education, has been published semi-tri-annually since 1985. Each volume has a distinct topic relevant to Outward Bound at the time of publication and has a distinct personality driven by its editor at the time. Although each article is written about Outward Bound or is of significant interest to Outward Bound, they are generally of interest to the wider educational and outdoor community.

In the Fall 2022 issue of Pathways, Rob Wallis, OBC Principal and Curriculum Manager, published a paper about OBC’s partnership with Ancient Forests Exploration and Research. Through this partnership, OBC youth participants collected data on old-growth forests during an expedition in Algonquin Park.

This was one of our most rewarding Citizen Science projects. Our students gave back to their community while gaining social-emotional skills and developing environmental leadership on their expedition.

To read the article click here. To read the full version of the Fall 2022 journal of Pathways, click here.

The most recent volume – Volume 12 –  is strikingly relevant to our work today, as it is on the topic of mental health. At OBC and Outward Bound as a whole Internationally, mental health is connected to almost every aspect of our work.

Research Committee

Outward Bound Canada (OBC) is committed to producing leading research in the fields of outdoor education, adventure education, environmental education, experiential learning, adventure therapy and sustainable recreation using a wide range of methodological approaches and research traditions. To provide direction and support in these fields, OBC has appointed a volunteer Research Advisory Committee. This committee operates semi-independently from OBC in an advisory capacity to review research proposals, assist with the transfer of knowledge and practice between OBC and allied outdoor education fields, and to assist in building sustainability for the research efforts at OBC. The committee members include Patrick T. Maher, Timothy S. O’Connell, Nevin Harper, Blair Niblett, Elizabeth K. Nisbet, Janet Dyment, Philip M. Mullins and Natashia Singh.

Click here to learn more about the committee.