Abstract
Learning to white-water kayak often takes place in a stressful environment. This challenges participants’ experiences of the activity, causes emotional responses, and can affect their learning. The purpose of this study is to explore participants’ experienced emotions during an educational white-water kayaking programme. Fifty-eight outdoor students from New Zealand participated. The participants responded to a bespoke questionnaire exploring fleeting somatic arousal and emotion on five different occasions during a kayaking day. Participants’ emotions changed during the activity. Excitement was significantly higher than anxiety across the day. Anxiety was highest before starting the activity. No significant difference was found between the male and female participants’ emotions. A thematic analysis resulted in five themes describing the participants’ emotional experiences. Findings are discussed and related to theory and previous research. These findings present new insights regarding in-the-moment emotional perspectives during a white-water kayaking course for novices.
Highlights
White-water kayaking has a long history in the Anglosphere (MacGregor, 1866), starting as an outdoor adventure or recreational activity and developing into competitive sport, an Olympic sport, a tourist attraction, and an educational tool
Instrument Participants’ perceptions of how they experienced excitement, anxiety, and arousal were measured through a questionnaire we developed to fit the natural environment of white-water kayaking: the Kayaking Emotion Thermometer (KET) (Appendix 1).This instrument was designed to give a simple to administer ‘snapshot’ of the emotional state of the participant ‘in the moment’, and to provide a deeper understanding of the participants’ lived experience
The results suggest that the participants in our study find learning whitewater kayaking to be an intense process and experience, with strong emotions
Summary
White-water kayaking has a long history in the Anglosphere (MacGregor, 1866), starting as an outdoor adventure or recreational activity and developing into competitive sport, an Olympic sport, a tourist attraction, and an educational tool.
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