Empowerment and Experiential Education: A State of Knowledge Paper

Experiential settings hold great potential for empowering participants. Beginning with an overview of how empowerment has been defined and conceptualized in the literature, this article examines the construct of empowerment in experiential education settings as a process and an outcome. A summary of how empowerment has been applied and measured in experiential settings is described through a review of the research in this area. This article concludes with recommendations and implications for researchers and practitioners in the field of experiential education who seek to understand ways in which programs can facilitate and foster the development of empowerment.