Changing zones and breakthrough :Comfort Zone
Characteristics of Comfort Zone:
Safe, known, familiar, secure, comfortable, competent, and predictable.
Characteristics of Stretch Zone:
Unknown, uncertainty, stress, and anxiety.
Characteristics of Panic Zone:
Unable, irrelevant, and stressful..
What is the role of adventure in teaching and learning?
The comfort zone is safe, known, familiar, secure, comfortable, competent or predictable. It is unique and continually changing for every person; it has different shapes and sizes depending of life stage. Different challenges push the edge for different people.
The stretch zone is the unknown and uncertainty. Overcoming stress and anxiety, where one can deal with the situation and feel good about overcoming stress and anxiety and the comfort zone being enlarged. E.g. Presenting in front of people.
There are three primary zones in which people exist. The first is called the comfort zone, a place where everything is calm and there is equilibrium. The second zone is the stretch zone, a place where interest is piqued, our senses are enlivened, and there is some disequilibrium. The third zone is the panic zone, a place where stress is so high that information cannot be integrated and high adrenaline makes it impossible to settle into a learning environment.
Experience has shown that learning occurs when people are in their stretch zone. Intellectual development and personal growth do not occur if there is no disequilibrium in a person’s current thinking or feeling. However, learning will also shut down if that disequilibrium gets so high that the person enters the panic zone, and adventure education is known for creating stretch-zone experiences that take on many different forms.