Instructional experimental design and operation for integrating curriculum ideology and politics into the outdoor education program “Safe Wilderness Classroom”

Guided by the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, the need to address the contradiction between talent supply and demand in China's outdoor industry, as well as the disconnect between safety skill training and value guidance in traditional teaching, has made exploring effective pathways for integrating Curriculum Ideology and Politics an urgent priority. Relying on the “Safe Wilderness Classroom” instructional experiment at Changzhou University, this paper deeply analyzes the coupling mechanism between outdoor risk management and ideological educational elements. The study aims to reconstruct the three-dimensional objective system of knowledge, ability, and ideology. By embedding themes of life-safety orientation, patriotism, mountaineering spirit, and ecological civilization throughout the entire risk-response process, it explores a synergistic educational pathway to achieve the bidirectional enhancement of professional skill transfer and value internalization. This approach meets the industry's urgent demand for compound talents with high safety literacy.

This study designed and operated a full-process outdoor instructional experiment system that transforms the student role from a passive learner to an active decision-making Outdoor Team Leader. The experiment used Maoshan in Jurong, Jiangsu, as the field site, requiring students to lead a two-day, one-night hiking and camping mission. The implementation was divided into three core phases. 1) Prepractice Phase: Following a process of mobilization, theoretical study, team building, and plan formulation, students used digital platforms to identify four risk categories: environmental, human, equipment, and compound risks. Student groups used tools such as risk matrices to formulate refined plans containing graded assessments and emergency contingency plans for specific routes, ensuring material readiness through multiple rounds of plan optimization. 2) In-practice Phase: Relying on the team leader responsibility system and a refined division of labor, groups executed their plans in authentic wilderness contexts. The instruction focused on reinforcing on-site decision-making capabilities and team synergy from the leader's perspective, employing daily structured debriefings to achieve dynamic calibration of outdoor risk management. Simultaneously, ideological elements were organically integrated with risk types: the life-safety orientation was integrated throughout the risk control process; patriotism was cultivated through red resources and role fulfillment; the mountaineering spirit was tempered during the 18-kilometer load-bearing hike; and ecological behavior was regulated by the Two Mountains theory and Leave No Trace principles. 3) Postpractice Phase: A mechanism for intragroup self-examination and intergroup cross-feedback was constructed to deeply analyze deviations in plan execution and the effectiveness of role fulfillment. Finally, relying on a comprehensive evaluation that included ideological dimensions, the study extracted risk checklists and a library of typical cases with promotion value, realizing the transformation from experiential reflection to the consolidation of educational outcomes.

The experimental results had three main dimensions. 1) Risk Perception and Response Dimension: Students' outdoor safety literacy was markedly enhanced, achieving a transformation to active, systematic environmental screening and risk mitigation concepts. 2) Decision-making and Execution Dimension: When facing compound risk situations, the organizational resilience and collaborative decision-making capabilities of the teams were strengthened, enabling rational judgments based on evidence chains. 3) Value Internalization Dimension: The organic fusion of professional teaching and Curriculum Ideology and Politics was achieved, where abstract values were concretized into behavioral norms and responsibilities within the wilderness environment.

This study deeply coupled outdoor risk management skills and ideological educational values by constructing a systematic management framework covering prepractice, in practice, and postpractice. The research proves that integrating life-safety orientation, patriotism, mountaineering spirit, and ecological civilization into real tasks of risk identification, assessment, and response greatly enhances students' practical abilities to solve complex problems and their sense of social responsibility. This model effectively resolves the disconnect between safety education and ideological education in traditional outdoor teaching, providing a replicable paradigm and empirical reference for safety education and curriculum reform in university outdoor education.