Outdoor relational education strengthens antifragility

Most people will be familiar with the concept of resilience, referring to the ability of individuals or systems to bounce back from adversity, stress or trauma – whether it’s emotional, physical or psychological. Fewer people though would have heard of the concept of ‘antifragility’, introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese-American writer who has become well known with a series of books on risk and uncertainty. A key notion of the concept of antifragile is that systems not only can bounce back but also grow and evolve when confronted with certain levels of disturbances and setbacks, leading eventually to increased performance (see Figure 1).

Taleb argues that this concept translates into a different perspective on how we should deal with risk and uncertainty. Rather than avoiding these, as many people have a tendency to do, one could also consciously introduce or embrace a certain level of risk and uncertainty in one’s life as a stimulus for personal growth.

Over the past few years, outdoor relational education has become an important part of the FNP curriculum through courses such as Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 1 & 2. In these courses, besides exploring the innate relationship between people and their natural environment, there is a strong emphasis on experiential learning. This kind of experiential learning implies that students are invited and stimulated to gain practical and embodied experiences in a natural environment which is partly unknown and unpredictable, and which involves a certain level of risk, uncertainty and discomfort.

In the course, Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 1, for example, students are invited to think about the process of making, and by that, about their relationship with natural materials and the natural environment. Making can then, amongst other things, become a way of breaking down human-nature dichotomies. Practically, we take this up through the craft of wood carving. The process of making a tool or utensil like a spoon, includes the selection of an appropriate piece of wood, the demonstration of safe carving techniques, as well as knife sharpening practices. Each of these dimensions of the process requires physical dexterity, emotional commitment, and intellectual engagement. Besides opening up a new world of knowledge, techniques, challenges and possibilities, this pedagogical approach also involves a certain level of risk. The risk, for example, to cut yourself when being careless or distracted.

In the course of Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 2, students are invited to engage their (future) role as environmental change makers. Working from a self-chosen transition theory, they develop and lead outdoor relational learning activities for fellow students. As part of this, students prepare themselves for a journey to Sweden where they are submerged into an environment that is unfamiliar and challenging to most of them. Employing the pedagogical concept of a ‘living syllabus’, the students are to a large extent in charge of shaping this journey themselves. This offers them all kinds of challenges when it comes to dealing with issues of food, shelter, rain, and not in the least… midges.

What we have encountered in both these courses is that many of the students show remarkable levels of personal growth over a relatively short period of time. Not only do they prove to be able to deal with all kinds of challenges, or bounce back from set-backs, they actually show levels of increased performance as the courses progress.

Getting a cut from a knife, for example, can be a painful experience but after a first cut, most students will be extra vigilant with their carving technique and remember to frequently sharpen their knives, as they have learned that a blunt knife is actually a bigger risk to work with than a sharp one.

Finding a good spot to camp and being able to quickly make fire can be a crucial skill when trying to keep the cold or the midges at a distance at night. Usually, already after one sleepless night, students become more aware of the importance of choosing, preparing and setting up a camp for the night, including a decent fire.

When students go off-track in the Swedish forest, they might quickly experience a true feeling of solitude, especially if they manage to stay away from the navigation tools on their mobile phone. Such an experience can be an extra motivation to improve navigation skills and really get ‘into the map or the terrain’. These improved skills in turn seem to contribute to self-confidence that no matter what happens, in the end they will be able to find their way.

Improved self-confidence in relation to a practice or skill as a result of experienced setbacks is an illustration of antifragility. But we observe effects that go deeper as well. Many students enter the course as passive consumers of knowledge, frequently with explicit or implicit expectations that the lecturers will steer them and make important decisions for them in their learning trajectory. By the end of the course, however, many of them seem to have developed (the start of) a new sense of self, a realisation that they can, will and must be environmental change-makers of the future. Where fragility, robustness and resilience (see Figure 1) usually pertain to the sphere of self-growth, this course has shown that antifragility seems to position the self in a broader social sphere, denoting deep care and taking up reflexive responsibility.

What the courses have taught us over the past few years is that outdoor relational education has a significant impact on students. And students, in turn, are highly appreciative, not so much in spite of the exposure to a certain level of risk, uncertainty and discomfort, but rather because of. Outdoor relational education offers students a possibility to become more antifragile, something that will be all the more valuable stepping into a world full of risks and uncertainty, a world in urgent need of change makers.

From the academic year 2025/26 (period 6), the courses Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 1 and 2 have been merged into one 12-ECTS course ‘Relational Ethnoecology: The skills that connect’ (FNP40812).