The Temporary Community: Student Experiences of School-Based Outdoor Education Programmes

This paper reports on a New Zealand study that obtained firsthand narrative accounts from a group of Year 10 (14 to 15 years old) secondary school students who were provided with 27-exposure disposable cameras on which they were asked to take a series of photographs to record what a residential school camp was like for them. Follow-up individual photo-elicitation interviews with the 32 self-selected respondents (21 female, 11 male) revealed that school camp is an enjoyable, socially different experience where students are able to spend time with their friends and develop their peer networks in a temporary community. Researchers are encouraged to use photo-elicitation interviews when their research objectives traverse the changing preoccupations of adolescents or of other groups during their life courses, and practitioners should consider developing programmes that incorporate the social youth development outcomes salient to adolescent participants.