From the Director – Pymble Institute
Year 9 Vision Valley Longstay program
Research program and early insights
I was recently privileged to participate in the pioneering Vision Valley Year 9 longstay five day trek, The Great Return, with a fantastic group of students. I am very pleased I survived the walk! It was physically challenging and a very different way to spend my working week but I had some ulterior motives driving me on! As Director of the Pymble Institute, where I lead the College’s research program, I am also part of the team designing and implementing the research project into outdoor education and I wanted to gain first-hand experience of the program and practice some field-based data collection.
The study is assessing measures of courage, stress and resilience and data is being collected from participating Pymble students and their parents, as well as school leaders from both Pymble and Riverview. Quantitative input comes from pre and post online surveys and feedback forms and qualitative measures include individual interviews, focus groups, photographs, video, diaries and drawings.
Early insights
Fieldwork requires a range of data collection methods. In this chart, demonstrating one way of collecting data without technology and within the constructs of the program, students rate themselves out of 10 to describe ‘where they’re at’. In this example, the average ‘Start of program’ rating is 6.4/10, which increases to 8.5/10 at the end of the program (N=19).
The pre/post survey (N=44), which was administered online on the first Monday of the program and again in the first week back at school, showed evidence of a slight increase in the mean score drawing from a 7-item scale, ‘Academic Resilience’ (Marsh & Martin, 2008).
These snippets give a taste of the types of insights we will receive from the research project which will aid in improving the program. I look forward to sharing much more comprehensive insights with parents, students and staff in the near future.
Dr Sarah Loch