European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

This paper attempts to deal with the issue of group cohesion among Malaysian Institute of Teacher Education outdoor education students by applying the elements of sequencing adventure activities in their outdoor education programs. Through this design, the participants were asked to choose their preferred sequence of adventure activities and followed by the pre and post-test of Group Environmental Questionnaire (GEQ) instrument to measure their level of group cohesion. This study focused on 350 (N=350) first year undergraduate students from four campuses who attended four different outdoor education programs. The study utilized a treatment and non-equivalent control group for the pre and post-test design. Result suggested that the sequence of activity from low to high risk activity is the most appropriate approach to enhance students’ group cohesion. MANCOVA procedures suggested that the sequence of adventure activities had positively improved the group cohesion aspects of the experimental group with significant gain in ATG-T, ATG-S, GI-T and GI-S. Furthermore, results also highlight the improvement of group outcome aspects (GI-T and GI-S) which surpassed individual aspects (ATG-T and ATG-S). Overall, the results of this study showed that outdoor education improves teacher trainees’ group cohesion.