ENHANCING LEADERSHIP PRACTICES: AN OUTDOOR EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE

Leadership skill is required to influence major decisions and the experience gained from a leadership role will be valuable for a lifetime. In many colleges and higher learning institutions, a college leader is thrown into a learning environment that encourages hands-on experience. This study aims to examine an outdoor education program as one of the useful tools that higher education could use to identify students’ leadership practices. It is done by comparing students who participated in outdoor education program and those who did not participate. Using the convenience sampling technique, a total of 106 students from the Faculty of Sport Science and Recreation UiTM were selected for this study. Data was collected through the Students Leadership Practices Inventory questionnaire used to measure three leadership practices: ‘Model the Way’, ‘Inspire a Shared Vision’ and ‘Challenge the Process’. Independent sample t-test was used in order to identify the significant difference of the three leadership practices between the two groups of students. The results showed that there were significant differences in all three leadership practices of the students who participated in outdoor education program. Thus, this study proposed that outdoor education program is one of the effective activities to develop experiential learning that could be offered to all students of higher education to equip them with leadership skills required for future employability.