Keri A. Schwab

Engaging Youth in Lifelong Outdoor Adventure Activities through a Nontraditional Public School Physical Education Program.

Engaging youth in traditional physical education exercises or ball sports can be a challenging task, especially when they prefer novelty, entertainment, or excitement in their leisure-time activities. In addition, many youth are unaware of the opportunities that exist to exercise or recreate in nature, often preferring to spend time indoors connected to screens and virtual realities rather than in the real world outside. This article describes how one public school physical educator addressed this problem by creating an outdoor recreation program as his charter schools physical education curriculum. He engages youth in novel experiences they are intrinsically motivated to try, such as kayaking, bicycling, indoor climbing, and overnight camping. By participating in these activities, students learn not only lifelong leisure activities, but also about safety, risk, decision making, problem solving, leadership, and communication skills while participating in physically demanding activities.

The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self: Implications for Leisure Science

ABSTRACT In this research reflection we question the way leisure experience is commonly understood and how leisure science is commonly conducted. Specifically, we focus on advances in multiple self-theory popularized by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow, an in-depth examination of human thought processes. After establishing Kahnemans foundational perspective, we apply his thinking to leisure experience and leisure science by reviewing recent scholarship focused on the “experiencing” and “remembering” selves (2000). We conclude the reflection by discussing the implications of Kahnemans thinking for the use of self-reports by leisure scientists, as well as call for greater congruence between the selves we seek to research and our selected research methods.

Lessons from the Legends: America’s Expanding Liberal Democratic Tradition

“Lessons from the Legends” is a series of 10 inspirational videos created for park and recreation classroom and staff training purposes. Each video depicts an important theme uncovered in a larger content analysis of a cross section of in depth interviews with park and recreation practitioners and educators selected as “Legends in Parks and Recreation” by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration. We present each video’s script as an article with a link to its accompanying video that brings the story to life. Readers are invited to access the link and download the video for educational purposes as each article appears in “Legends and Legacies.” Subscribe to JPRA

Toward a More Phronetic Leisure Science

In this essay, we examine the assumptions underlying natural science, social science, and the humanities. More specifically, we suggest that social science in general and leisure science in particular be guided by a different set of assumptions than those guiding natural science and the humanities. Drawing on the Aristotelian idea of phronesis, we propose that value rationality more so than instrumental rationality guide social scientific inquiry, and that social science in general, and leisure science in particular, be viewed as a bridge between natural science and the humanities.

Lessons from the Legends: A Content Analysis of the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration’s Legends Videos

This paper reports lessons learned from sampling 68 of 119 videotaped interviews with the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration’s (AAPRA’s) Legends in Parks and Recreation. The videos contain great insight into the history of the organized park and recreation movement in the United States, as well as the administrative, educational, and philosophical positions of its leading administrators and educators. The examination was prompted by our interest in whether there might be patterns of foresight in the videos that could serve present and future park and recreation professionals. We examined each of the 68 videos in teams of two, searching for common themes. Using a three-phase content analysis, we discerned three broad categories within which to discuss the results: becoming extraordinary, being extraordinary, and serving an extraordinary profession. Within each of the three categories, we also discuss several emerging sub-themes. We conclude the paper by directing the reader to a video link that brings the Lessons from the Legends to life, and discussing educational use of the videos.