My UROP placement took place during the second year of a three year intervention study, aiming to investigate whether outdoor adventure activity camps could improve students who were underachieving in school.

It has been identified that in the UK, students from the lowest social economic areas continue to underachieve in education. The staggering statistic from 2009 revealed that only 27% of young people eligible for Free School Meals achieved 5 passes at GCSE, compared to 54% of those who were non-eligible (Office of National Statistics, accessed 2011). This can have knock on effects with children from low socio-economic areas less likely to carry on with their education passed GCSEs.

This project presented a new initiative to change this trend by introducing an outdoor education initiative. As a Psychology student, working on a project within the Institute of Education was a bit out of my comfort zone. However, the topic really appealed to me and the research aimed to improve the school lives of children in low social economic areas so I was interested in working on the project. Under the supervisor of Dr Carol Fuller, I was able to experience a number of valuable data collection and analysis techniques. At the start of the project, we visited Ufton Adventure Camp, where the ten student volunteers were carrying out their third residential stay at the camp. We joined them on the Saturday morning whilst they were working together to cook and clean up during breakfast. A student showed me around the camp and talked me through what he had learnt and what he had enjoyed the most about the camp from previous visits. We joined the group on a mountain bike session before returning home. I made some notes on the observations I had made during the visit. One student opened up to me about how he thought at first the camps were pointless but now saw the bigger picture and realised how they could benefit him. Some students were harder to talk to and wouldn’t initiate conversation with me but it was interesting to see how the students communicated with each other and worked together on the activities. The staff had built up a rapport with the students and worked on the basis of mutual respect, which I think was really important to the gains the students made whilst at the camp.

After the camp visit, I learnt to use nVIVO  software to code interviews that had been carried out with the students before the recent camp visit. The semi-structured interviews aimed to gain information from the students about their thoughts towards Ufton and any changes they had noticed in themselves e.g. behaviour and attainment, between camp visits.  After reading through the qualitative data, I drew up some themes from the text and after checking them over with my supervisor, coded them using nVIVO. The main themes of attainment in school, confidence in work and social situations and ambition arose and the majority of student felt that such factors improved for them due to the skills and experiences they had had at Ufton. This was a really promising find as it supported the hypothesis of the study and demonstrated the positive impact that camp visits had on the students. It was also interesting to see in what way each student felt the camps benefitted them, for example, meeting new people helped to improve their social skills and confidence, trying new activities encouraged them to try new things or discover new skills and being chosen for the study made them want to get the most out of the experience and make their teachers proud.

I also used SPSS to code and reverse code data from a questionnaire also given to the students before the recent camp visit. The data supported the interviews, with the students rating their experiences, behaviour, future ambitions and school life. During this time I read up on the benefits of qualitative and quantitative data and combing both data types together, as in this study, to understand why each data collection was used. Following this, I prepared the next set of questionnaires for the students, which we presented to them on a school visit after the camp.

This data will be compared to the previous questionnaire data to assess any changes since the third camp visit. To finish off my placement, I will be assisting with the Raising Aspirations and Achievement: the Role of the Outdoors Conference, which will take place at the University of Reading in October. I will help to organise the event, assist visitors and co-ordinate the students from our study during the conference.

My UROP placement experience was very valuable and I have learnt a lot about different methods of data collection, which will benefit me in my final year at University. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting involved with a subject that was out of my subject area as it was not only very interesting but also gave me an insight into the education sector, an area which I would like to work in in the future. The placement allowed me to help with research that could actually make a difference to the lives of young people so I felt valued too. Thank you Dr Fuller for allowing me to help with your research and teaching me lots of new research skills and techniques!

Sophie Marder