From leadership research to district action: Investigating the impact of adventure education on children’s physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development: A mixed method systematic review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Read source Search paper agent CC BY 4.0

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

This mixed-method systematic review examines how Adventure Education is perceived by children and its impact on their development. Children’s age ranged between 06–18 years. AE been reported to improve participants’ leadership, self-efficacy, peer support, relationship skills, independence, and the ability to follow instructions. Six quantitative research studies have shown a positive association of AE with various socio-emotional development outcomes. Participants exhibited enhanced resilience, hedonic balance, and life satisfaction. Individuals engaged in AE were found to experience reduced mental health issues and stress levels. One study found that the AE program significantly impacted physical activity outcomes, with effect sizes ranging from 0.029 to 0.663. However, long-term effects could not be definitively concluded due to the lack of follow-up measures of the interventions.

Study methods

A systematic review was conducted to analyse qualitative and quantitative studies exploring the effects of AE on children’s growth and development. The review was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (CRD42024520033) in March 2024. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses [50] guidelines were followed for reporting this review.

Limitations

The present study conducted a comprehensive review of recent literature to investigate the impact of AE on children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development. Both qualitative and quantitative measures were utilised to assess the effectiveness of AE interventions among children. However, it is important to acknowledge that the review is subject to certain limitations. The selected articles exhibited considerable heterogeneity regarding intervention types, duration, outcomes measured, and participants’ age, which pose challenges in drawing conclusive findings. Furthermore, while one study implemented a randomized controlled trial with single-blinded randomization, most studies lacked a comparison group and sufficient follow-up measures. It is worth noting that only 5 out of 12 articles (42%) were rated as high-quality based on the researchers’ quality appraisal. Additionally, the study exclusively focused on healthy children, necessitating a cautious interpretation of the results.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Ruhina Binta A. Ghani; Patrick W. C. Lau; Nike Lu; Peng Zhou; Jing Jing Wang. Investigating the impact of adventure education on children’s physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development: A mixed method systematic review. PLOS One (2025-06-30). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327181

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.