The camp community understands that participation in camp produces a variety of impacts; what is less understood are the causal mechanisms leading to outcomes. In the past, research on the camp experience treated causal mechanisms as monolithic; this commentary argues that a weakness in existing camp research is the assumption that…

The residential outdoor program involved 60 sixth grade students, divided into 5 groups, distributed as evenly as possible. Each group consisted of leaders, followers, and children with experience in the field and those without experience. Teachers were also divided into 5 groups, usually two or three working together. Each team of teachers chose…