A case study on the outcome of outdoor leadership course offered by Mt. Kenya School of adventure and leadership

Abstract

Outdoor experiential education has been described as an integrated approach to all learning. It involves social development and the acquisition of skills associated with living and journeying in the outdoors. This study explored the effects of outdoor experiential education on leadership development training to senior administrative officers from the Ministry of State for Provincial Administration and Internal Security in Kenya. The study was designed to determine the effects of experiential education based leadership course on participants' selected leadership attributes of decision-making, planning, resource allocation, control, delegation, communication, initiative, interpersonal skills and risk-taking. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. A self-report questionnaire was used to evaluate the outcomes of the effects of outdoor experiential education on leadership development training, midway the ten days' course and after the course. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test and analysis of variance techniques at p=0.05 level of significance. Findings after applying a t-test showed that participants' leadership attributes were significantly improved by the course to the following mean scores; communication 4.42, decision-making 4.36, planning 4.39, delegation 4.36, resource allocation 4.25, control 4.36, risk- taking 5, initiative 4, and 3.92 for interpersonal, on a likert scale where 5 was strongly agree and 1 was strongly disagree. There were no significant differences across gender in terms of leadership attributes outcomes after the course. Only three leadership attributes were improved between the fifth and the tenth day of the course. These included risk-taking, initiative, and interpersonal skills. It was observed that the first five days of the course led to more impact on leadership attributes compared to the last five days of the ten- day's experiential education leadership course. It is therefore, recommended that institutions and organizations seek experiential-based leadership courses to enhance their leadership attributes. Mt Kenya School of Adventure and Leadership should organize five to ten days outdoor Leadership courses that target both gender and participants of various age categories since they would all benefit from the programmes.