The Hurdle Method

The hurdle method is a hands-on technique for involving youth in developing a desire to learn and to apply new knowledge. We use "hurdles" extensively. These are unexpected challenges presented to the leader and his group for which he has not specifically prepared and which requires them to apply specific leadership skills—and sometimes outdoor—skills. It is a deliberately crafted, well-considered, thoughtfully prepared and usually hands-on learning exercise. It helps individuals foster a desire to learn and to apply new knowledge. A hurdle usually includes specific constraints designed to influence the outcome.

Managers-of-learning create hurdles that are experiential, challenging, and engage the participants in meaningful learning opportunities. Managers-of-learning may use hurdles as a formal guided discovery or as an application during a learning experience.

About Hurdles

Hurdles are effective because they are heuristic, an “educational method in which the student is allowed or encouraged to learn independently through his own investigation.“ Hurdles are experience-based techniques that require participation, demand problem solving skills, stimulate learning, and stretch participant’s perception of what they are capable of accomplishing. Hurdles are planned experiences that are purposefully linked to learning objectives.

Hurdles are not challenges

Hurdles are differentiated from opportune “challenges” that arise in the environment. Hurdles and challenges share some common elements, like surprise, difficulty, and victory. Both have the goal of fostering team unity. A hurdle is a planned exercise that requires the team to coordinate their efforts to respond to specific, defined, and possibly artificial circumstances. A challenge is an unplanned obstacle in the real environment that must be overcome. Managers-of-learning need to be careful about concocting spur-of-the-moment challenges for the learning team. Spontaneous challenges may not be linked to learning outcomes and can in fact distract from accomplishing team goals.

One of the paramount characteristics of a leader is his readiness to act in a novel situation. Unexpected tasks that require efficient group organization provides realistic and valuable practice.

Roots of the hurdle method

The hurdle concept was indirectly described by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting. He referred to the White Stag in his last address at a World Jamboree in 1933, at Gödöllö, Hungary.

"You may look on that White Stag as the pure spirit of Scouting, springing forward and upward, ever leading you onward and upward to leap over difficulties, to face new adventures..."

The spirit of the hurdle is the same: to lead people onward and forward, overcoming obstacles, to seek continual improvement. Hurdles must be designed to help team members move forward and upward in their understanding of and ability to apply the leadership competencies.

The hurdle concept also utilizes Baden-Powell's theory of small groups which he described as the patrol method. In brief, people, learn, work and play—they are more happy and successful—when they are a member of a small group (6-9 members). The hurdle method uses small group interaction as a principle ingredient of its process.