Paul Ylvisaker
Expeditionary Learning evolved from the Harvard Outward Bound Project, which had its origins in a 1988 keynote address, "The Missing Dimension," delivered by former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Paul Ylvisaker, at the third International Outward Bound Conference. Ylvisaker described five components of effective education offered by Outward Bound but not typically included in the debate over school policy and reform:
• Learning requires challenge and emotion.
• Learning requires caring and intimacy.
• Learners need a reasonable likelihood of success.
• Learning happens best in an environment where the individualistic and the collective join.
• Educators must know and communicate the value of values.
Ylvisaker concluded his remarks with an invitation to Outward Bound: "What I am encouraging you to be is a voice, where things are talked about and debated....We at the Graduate School of Education could use this voice....Let's work together."
The Harvard Outward Bound Project hired its first director for the 1989-1990 school year; offered its first module, "Experience in Education: Building a Curriculum," in the spring of 1991; and conducted its first of three annual summer institutes on "Active Learning in the Middle School." In response to Ylvisaker's request, its goal was to make Outward Bound principles and practices part of the "drinking water" of public education.
| 
