Experiencing Leisure of Older School Age Children as an Educational Challenge

Changes in the leisure participation of the older school age children connected predominantly with the increasing impact of internet and social networks in children lives are one of the challenges of 21th century. Changes in children leisure life style and experiencing leisure are influenced by various sociodemographic, cultural, economic and ecological factors. It can be expected that the meaning of leisure would increase and thus increase also a need for education for these parts of lives that are not connected to work. 

The aim of the project was to use a multidisciplinary approach based on pedagogical and sociological research to define pedagogical challenges, related strategies and specific educational programmes that would lead to an increase of the ‘leisure competence’ of older school-age children (i.e. their ability to evaluate their use of leisure time more critically) so that they would opt for quality leisure experience and thus increase their resilience against socially pathological forms of leisure. Based on developed strategies, two educational programmes that would lead to an increase in the leisure competence of older school-age children were developed. The first one was designed for older school-age children (i.e. 11–15 years old), and the second one was designed for students of pedagogical faculties.

It was an applied research project. Principal leader of the project was the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, project partners were the Institute of Sociology CAS MEDIAN, s.r.o. and Salesiánský klub mládeže, z.s. Dům Ignáce Stuchlého.

The IS CAS team was responsible for the sociological part of the project.  Our main tasks were to design a large nationally representative survey focusing on children’s leisure (with both children and parents participating), analyse the data obtained from the survey and interpret the results for the other project partners who provided applied results for the project. The results of our nationally representative sociological survey were summarised in a study Volný čas dětí staršího školního věku a jeho prožívání. Výsledky reprezentativního výzkumu v České republice 2021 (monitorovací studie) [Older School–Age Children’s Leisure and its Experiencing. Results of the Representative Survey – Czech Republic 2021 (Monitoring Study)]. The IS CAS team also wrote 3 chapters to the monography prepared together with colleagues from University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice.