Mainstream education studies have shown that teachers have a strong desire to control their work situation and maintain classroom autonomy. Issues of control and power are also prevalent in outdoor education, where the facilitator is put in a position of power, controlling the participants’ learning experience. What follows is an examination of how order and instructions are used, on occasion, by facilitators in an outdoor setting to take control over the activity and achieve their own disciplinary goals. This paper was based on a PhD study conducted at a residential outdoor centre, involving primary school children, teachers and the centre staff. An ethnographic approach was adopted, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews to collect varied data. The findings revealed that the controlling approaches adopted by some facilitators interfered with the pupils’ outdoor learning experience. This level of control appeared to have a great impact on the educational process to the extent that the desired learning outcomes were not attained. This has serious implications on the impact that teachers’ and outdoor facilitators’ approaches have on the pupils’ outdoor learning experience, and more awareness is needed with regard to this impact
