Effectiveness of sports activities with an orientation on experimental education, adventure-based learning and outdoor education

The following article deals with the analysis of the effectiveness of sports activities with an emphasis on adventure-based learning, experiential and outdoor education. In spite of the variety of approaches a multi-faceted emphasis can still be identified. They are used as (course) modules aiming at developing a modifi-cation of behaviour. Insomuch such exertions show explicit signatures of processes of sports education. In view of the difficult manageable size of the supply in this main sector of outdoor education, the question arises, which effects of activities of outdoor education can be expected. To investigate the effectiveness of interventions of outdoor education, sports students were examined during two successive compact camps, consisting of the typical relevant contents of outdoor education. The diagnostic instrument, the Multidimen-sional Self-Esteem Scale (MSES) (Schütz & Sellin, 2006), consisted of different scales concerning general self-esteem (GSW) and self-esteem with reference to the body (BSE). The subordinate scales apply to the di-mensions of self-worth, self-esteem, interpersonal conduct, social behaviour, awareness of body and move-ment, etc. Our investigations show a positive effect – the improvement of various facets of self-esteem, as well as the differentiation of the results within the sub-scales (consequently different effects can be distin-guished here) for the experimental group. The control group, the group that did not take part in an outdoor activity, did not show such a positive effect. Key words: effectiveness, sports activities, experiential education, adventure-based learning, outdoor education, self-estee