Human Development in an AI World: What Global Outward Bound Research Teaches Us About Helping Young People Thrive.

“Outward Bound transcends individual differences and kindles within each of us a sense of community. The wilderness environment allows one’s veneers to slip away, and each person can grow through daring to risk, to care, and to share with others. As an educational forum, Outward Bound offers true learning, involving heart, mind and body, in a way that will last a lifetime.”  

- Kurt Hahn, Co-founder of Outward Bound 

As artificial intelligence transforms how young people learn, work, communicate, and solve problems, the human skills that enable people to thrive become even more valuable. While AI can generate information, it cannot develop courage, compassion, resilience, judgment, or meaningful relationships. These qualities are cultivated through lived experience; the kind of experience that comes from extended learning opportunities such as those provided by Outward Bound.

Outward Bound, the world’s oldest outdoor and experiential education organization, began in the United Kingdom 85 years ago and now operates in more than 35 countries. Conceived by educator Kurt Hahn and funded by Sir Lawrence Holt, owner of the Blue Funnel shipping line, the first Outward Bound School began operating in Aberdovey, Wales, in 1941. It was designed to help young merchant seamen develop the resilience, courage, and teamwork needed to face the hardships of wartime. What began as “resilience training at sea” soon grew into a broader educational model rooted in challenge, service, compassion, and personal growth; principles that still guide Outward Bound today. From its origins in the UK, the movement expanded first across the Commonwealth and then around the world. Today, 36 independent but aligned Outward Bound Schools operate in 34 countries on six continents. 

One could argue that the world is once again in chaos. The global order is shifting, regional conflicts and climate disasters are driving migration, and young people are facing a future that looks very different from the one their parents inherited. It is against this backdrop that Outward Bound feels as relevant today as it did more than eight decades ago. While the challenges facing young people have changed, the qualities they need to thrive have not. Resilience, adaptability, empathy, leadership, collaboration, and environmental responsibility are increasingly recognized as essential life skills, yet they are difficult to cultivate in a classroom alone. Outward Bound's approach: learning through challenge, reflection, and meaningful experiences in nature, supported by strong peer relationships, helps participants build these skills while gaining confidence in themselves and a deeper connection to others and the natural world.

Outward Bound International (OBI) serves as the coordinating body for the global network of Outward Bound Schools. Established to uphold the integrity and quality of Outward Bound worldwide, OBI provides leadership, support, and guidance to ensure Schools deliver high-quality programs grounded in a shared educational philosophy. At the same time, OBI brings Schools together to share knowledge, strengthen partnerships, and advance research that deepens understanding of positive youth development, outdoor learning, and environmental responsibility. Through this work, OBI helps strengthen educational practice and amplify the collective impact of the global Outward Bound network.

As artificial intelligence changes how young people learn, work, communicate, and solve problems, the conversation about education is also shifting. Instead of focusing only on what AI can do, researchers are increasingly asking what humans can do that AI cannot. Recent MIT Sloan research identifies the capabilities least likely to be replaced by AI as distinctly human: empathy, judgment, ethical reasoning, creativity, hope, and the ability to build meaningful relationships. The World Economic Forum White Paper, New Economy Skills: Unlocking the Human Advantage, December 2025, suggests that resilience, creativity, leadership, collaboration, empathy, and lifelong learning will be among the defining skills of the future workforce. 

Outward Bound International’s research suggests these are precisely the capabilities that develop through challenging experiences in the outdoors. OBI's most recent 2026 global impact report, Flourishing Futures: Global Impact at Scale, draws on more than 47,000 participant surveys from Outward Bound Schools across the globe, revealing consistent outcomes across diverse cultures and contexts. Participants report increased confidence, resilience, stronger relationships, and a deeper connection to nature. An accompanying analysis of participants' open-ended reflections reinforces these findings: the most common themes were strengthening relationships and social skills (43% of coded responses), building inner resilience and confidence (31%), and developing practical outdoor and expedition skills (13%). Together, these quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that Outward Bound is helping young people cultivate the distinctly human skills that will matter most in an AI-enabled future. 

A four-year global research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and in partnership with Penn State University, Clemson University and University of Utah, takes this a step further.  The research examined how Outward Bound experiences contribute to character development and identified key mechanisms through which courses engage four dimensions of character. These include performance character, such as resilience and self-confidence; moral character, including compassion and social competence; civic character, including environmental responsibility; and intellectual character, including curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving. The research also identified the elements of Outward Bound practice that help activate these mechanisms, including its educational philosophy, experiential learning models, authentic adventure, instructor behaviours, and service. This research is significant because it begins to explain how the Outward Bound experience contributes to character development and the cultivation of the human capabilities young people need to thrive.

The longer-term picture is equally compelling. Recent OBI research involving 615 Outward Bound alumni from 16 OB Schools explored not only what participants valued learning during their courses, but how important those learnings remained in their daily lives. The findings show a strong alignment between the capabilities alumni associated with their Outward Bound experience and those they considered important in their lives. Curiosity, teamwork, resilience, communication, compassion, self-confidence, and environmental responsibility all emerged as areas of relatively high learning at Outward Bound and high importance in daily life. Outdoor skills, while among the strongest areas of learning, were less central to daily life, suggesting that the activities themselves may be the vehicle through which more transferable capabilities are developed.The value of an Outward Bound experience is not simply that young people learn to navigate a river, climb a mountain, or live comfortably in the outdoors. It is that these experiences provide a context in which they practise the human skills that become increasingly important as the world changes: working with others, adapting to uncertainty, making decisions, building relationships, developing confidence, and responding to challenge. At Outward Bound, we have discovered that the skills learned in the outdoors can travel well beyond the outdoors, and our research demonstrates this.

Outward Bound, and other extended outdoor and experiential learning experiences, have an important role to play in education in an AI world. The World Economic Forum argues that human-centric skills are becoming more, not less, valuable as technology advances. But these skills cannot simply be taught; they require deliberate cultivation and opportunities to practise.

For more than eight decades, Outward Bound has created learning environments where this can happen. Participants face real challenges in natural settings, work together, adapt when things do not go according to plan, and make decisions with real consequences. They discover their strengths and limitations, learn to rely on one another, and reflect on what they have learned. The outdoor challenge is important, but ultimately it is the vehicle for something larger: human development.

Kurt Hahn could not have imagined the world young people would inherit 85 years after the first Outward Bound School opened. Yet his belief that education should engage the whole person (heart, mind, body), feels especially relevant in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Creating opportunities for young people to develop these human skills may be one of education’s most important responsibilities. Such development often happens beyond the classroom, through extended experiences that challenge young people, connect them with others and the natural world, and allow them to learn through direct experience.