The terms of outdoor education, environmental education, and environmental interpretation are sometimesused as synonymous. This is likely because unique concepts of each field are not well understood and are notclearly distinguished. Consequently, this could lead confusion (misunderstanding) which would adversely affecteffective program planning and operation. Outdoor education is a tool to achieve separately set educationalobjects through experiencing and utilizing the existing objects in outdoor setting (“learning by doing”).Environmental education is a formal education that aims to develop environmentally responsible citizens fortotal human environment with global point of view in mind. Environmental interpretation is an informaleducation and a catalyst for individuals so that each individual will voluntarily contribute to improve localnatural environment. As a part of the process, both environmental education and environmental interpretationapply an essential philosophy of outdoor education, “Learning by doing” and programs of these fields aremainly held out-of-doors. Therefore, there are cooperative relationships among these fields. However, outdooreducation itself does not have its educational objects while environmental education and environmentalinterpretation do. Thus, it is crucial to appreciate uniqueness of each field for effective application of concept to various occasions.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the experience of camping upon cerebral activity.An experimental method, utilizing the go/no-go task, was used to examine the grasping response of a rubberboll to a light stimulus. The go/no-go task is a representative method of investigating the human inhibitoryfunction. The subjects were 46 children (27-boys and 19-girls) in grades 3 and 4 who participated in a 6-daycamp. This camp was designed to ensure that participants were given ample and vital opportunities for notonly physical activity but for communication with other people. We carried out the go/no-go experiment onfour occasions. (pre-1: 17days before camp, pre-2: first day of camp, post-1: final day of camp, post-2: 13days after camp)
The following results were obtained.
The post-1 data showed a significant decrease in the number of errors compared with pre-2 data. This resultsuggests that the children's camp which included vital opportunities for physical activity andcommunication with other people had a positive influence on cerebral activity. A similar result of asignificant decrease between pre-camp and post-camp was observed in two separate investigates. However, the change between pre-1 and pre-2, post-1 and post-2 were not significant. The results suggest that thedecrease between pre-camp and post-camp was the effect of camping experience, and its effect continued for 2 weeks after camping experience.

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The purpose of this study was to construct an inventory on the assessment of organized camp experiences forelementary school children, and to test the reliability and validity of this inventory. In Study 1, in order to selectthe items for this inventory, 159 sets of qualitative data were collected from preliminary studies and literaturereviews. Second, 43 items were selected from these on the basis of their generality and their relevancy.Exploratory factor analysis of data from 425 elementary children (4th to 6th grades) resulted in an Inventory ofOrganized Camp Experience for Children (IOCE-C) consisting of 20 items, including five subscales such as, “Experience of contact with nature, ”“Experience of challenge/mastery, ”“Experience of cooperation with others, ”“Experience of self-disclosure, ” and “Experience of self-focus.” Sufficient reliability of the IOCE-Cwas confirmed by results of measures of internal consistency and split-half reliability. Moreover, IOCE-Cscores were compared between two groups with various durations in organized camp experience. Results of thet-test analysis showed that IOCE-C scores of the group which had a longer camp experience were significantlyhigher than those of the group with the shorter camp period. This suggests that the IOCE-C has high constructvalidity. The elementary children's scores for the IOCE-C were reviewed for the differences between the sexesand between the grades. Girls showed higher score in “Experience of cooperation with others, ” Experience of“self-disclosure, ” and “Experience of self-focus” than boys. Further, boys in grade 6 presented higher score in“Experience of challenge/mastery” than boys in grade 4. In Study 2, discriminate validity was examined fromexperimental perspective. The results showed the IOCE-C had high validity in each subscale. Finally, a possible direction for future studies with use of the IOCE-C was discussed.

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