LESSON 4: PLAY, LEISURE AND RECREATION

Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment.!" Play is
commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but may be engaged in at any life stage,
and among other higher-functioning animals as well, most notably mammals and birds.

Many prominent researchers in the field of psychology, including Melanie Klein, Jean Piaget, William James,
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Lev Vygotsky have erroneously viewed play as confined to the human
species, believing play was important for human development and using different research methods to
prove their theories.

Play is often interpreted as frivolous; yet the player can be intently focused on their objective, particularly
when play is structured and goal-oriented, as in a game. Accordingly, play can range from relaxed, free-
spirited and spontaneous through frivolous to planned or compulsive. 2) Play is not just a pastime activity;
it has the potential to serve as an important tool in numerous aspects of daily life for adolescents, adults,
and cognitively advanced non-human species (such as primates). Not only does play promote and aid in
physical development (such as hand-eye coordination), but it also aids in cognitive development and social
skills, and can even act as a stepping stone into the world of integration, which can be a very stressful
process.
Play is something that most children partake in, but the way play is executed is different between cultures
and the way that children engage with play varies universally.

"Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously
outside 'ordinary' life as being
'not serious' but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with
no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time
and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings
that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by
disguise or other means."

Play as constituting a separate and independent sphere of human activity is sometimes referred to as the
"magic circle" notion of play, a phrase also attributed to Huizinga. 2) Many other definitions exist. Jean
Piaget stated, "the many theories of play expounded in the past are clear proof that the phenomenon is
difficult to understand."

Defining leisure, play, and recreation provides us as leisure professionals with a strong foundation for the
programs, services, and facilities that we provide. While we might disagree on the standard definition of
leisure, play, or recreation, we are all concerned with providing an experience for participants. Whether we
work in the public, private nonprofit, or commercial sector, all three concepts are driving forces behind the
experiences we provide. Table 1.1 outlines the basic definitions of leisure, play, and recreation.

Leisure as Time
Leisure is time free from obligations, work (paid and unpaid), and tasks required for existing (sleeping,
eating). Leisure time is residual time. Some people argue it is the constructive use of free time. While many
may view free time as all nonworking hours, only a small amount of time spent away from work is actually
free from other obligations that are necessary for existence, such as sleeping and eating.

Leisure as Activity
Leisure can also be viewed as activities that people engage in during their free time-activities that are not
work oriented or that do not involve life maintenance tasks such as housecleaning or sleeping.
Leisure as activity encompasses the activities that we engage in for reasons as varied as relaxation,
competition, or growth and may include reading for pleasure, meditating, painting, and participating in
sports.
This definition gives no heed to how a person feels while doing the activity; it simply states that certain
activities qualify as leisure because they take place during time away from work and are not engaged in for
existence. However, as has been argued by many, it is extremely difficult to come up with a list of activities
that everyone agrees represents leisure-to some an activity might be a leisure activity and to others it
might not necessarily be a leisure activity. Therefore, with this definition the line between work and leisure
is not clear in that what is leisure to some may be work to others and vice versa.

Leisure as State of Mind

Unlike the definitions of leisure as time or activity, the definition of leisure as state of mind is much more
subjective in that it considers the individual's perception of an activity. Concepts such as perceived
freedom, intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and positive affect are critical to determining
whether an experience is leisure or not leisure.
Perceived freedom refers to an individual's ability to choose the activity or experience in that the individual
is free from other obligations as well as has the freedom to act without control from others. Perceived
freedom also involves the absence of external constraints to participation.

The second requirement of leisure as state of mind, intrinsic motivation, means that the person is moved
from within to participate. The person is not influenced by external factors (e.g., people or reward) and the
experience results in personal feelings of satisfaction, enjoyment, and gratification. Perceived competence
is also critical to leisure defined as state of mind. Perceived competence refers to the skills people believe
they possess and whether their skill levels are in line with the degree of challenge inherent in an
experience. Perceived competence relates strongly to satisfaction, and for successful participation to occur,
the skill-to-challenge ratio must be appropriate.

Positive affect, the final key component of leisure as state of mind, refers to a person's sense of choice, or
the feeling people have when they have some control over the process that is tied to the experience.
Positive affect refers to enjoyment, and this enjoyment comes from a sense of choice.

What may be a leisure experience for one person may not be for another; whether an experience is leisure
depends on many factors.
Enjoyment, motivation, and choice are three of the most important of these factors. Therefore, when
different individuals engage in the same activity, their state of mind can differ drastically.

Definition of Play
Unlike leisure, play has a more singular definition. Play is imaginative, intrinsically motivated, nonserious,
freely chosen, and actively engaging. While most people see play as the domain of children, adults also
play, although often their play is more entwined with rules and regulations, which calls into question how
playful their play really is. On the other hand, children's play is typified by spontaneity, joyfulness, and
inhibition and is done not as a means to an end but for its inherent pleasure.

Lesson 4: Play, Leisure and Recreation

Learning game skills to improve team performance

By John Quay & Jacqui Peters.

Game Skills

Many traditional physical education lessons focus intently on movement or motor skill
development because these are seen as the building blocks of improved performance. However,
teachers of these lessons usually assume that the students can see the connections between
these skills and the games they are playing; they also often assume that this connection is so
obvious that the students will put effort into developing their skills in drills and other small group
activities before they have even played a game. However, in these typical situations, there is little
or no team affiliation, and there is no season; thus many students see this form of skill
development as something they just have to do for the teacher in order to stay out of trouble.

When team performance in the game is analysed, a key area that is usually identified for
improvement, apart from tactics, relates to skills. Students should be given the time to think about
which skills are important to the game via the Game Skills Review. The skills that the teacher
deemed must be included in the game when it was created should be amongst these. Other skills
will, of course, also emerge as important in relation to the design of the class game.

Game Skill Analysis and Feedback

When students realize that they, as a team, need to develop a particular game skill in order to
improve their team's performance in a season of games, then they are usually much more
motivated to engage in the effort required for practice. But improving performance of a game skill
usually involves more than just doing it repetitively. It requires developing a better understanding
of how the skill works (the techniques of the skill) and receiving feedback on how the student is
actually performing the techniques.

The basic techniques or parts of a game skill are usually fairly obvious to students, and yet they
are often conveyed to students as if they are teacher-derived facts to be learnt. This situates these
techniques outside the everyday experience of young people. However, these techniques are
familiar to many of them although many would not have stopped to observe and think about
them.

Thus the first task in helping students to develop a game skill is to have them observe each other
executing it in a controlled setting, such as throwing a ball to a partner to catch and return (or
passing and receiving for older students). In this early analysis, the situation they observe will be
fairly static: standing still. As their understanding progresses, these observations may be more
accurately contextualized in mini-games and eventually in the season games. You will probably
find that when the skill is contextualized in the game it changes subtly (or even significantly). This
is why we have called them game skills rather than fundamental or foundational skills.

When students are observing each other, they should be watching the main parts of their
teammate's body for what is going on:
Eyes—where are they looking or what are they looking at?

Arms and hands—what are their arms and hands doing?

Legs and feet—what are their legs and feet doing?

Torso—what is the main part of their body doing?

These observation activities can involve experimentation; they shouldn't simply be aimed at
somehow determining the right answers. Trying different ways to perform the skill by doing
different things with eyes, arms and hands, legs and feet, and torso, involves much more thought.
Students will recognise amongst their teammates and classmates a range of techniques from
which to choose. And for older students especially, it should become apparent that different
techniques, even though part of the same skill, may be better used in different parts of the game.
For example one type of throw may be important when scoring, another type when passing.

Drawing stick figures to portray the movement can be helpful. This is a task that could be
supported by teams using their whiteboard and then sharing these drawings in class, for instance
by the teacher taking photographs of the whiteboards and displaying them on a large screen.
Multiple versions of this sheet can be used for the same game skill as students refine their
understanding of this skill as it is used in the game.

Once the skill has been analysed in a basic way, students in their teams can be asked to develop
ways of practising this game skill. These activities may be drills or mini-games. The important
thing is for the activity to involve repeated use of the skill in ways that are similar or identical to
those of the class game. During these activities, students can be watching each other perform the
skill

Curriculum Integration Activity

Technology

Students can use a technology tool such as a digital camera, flip camera, video camera or
something similar to record each other performing the game skills. Create a checklist of all the
steps required in the skill and rate each other on each performance against those steps.