Fun, Activities, and Social Context: Leveraging Key Elements of Recreation Programs to Foster Self-Regulation in Youth
Keywords:
Self-Regulation, Positive Youth Development, Community Recreation, scaffoldingAbstract
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Youth face a number of obstacles during adolescence that can make achieving a healthy trajectory into adulthood challenging. An abundance of literature indicates that the ability to effectively self-regulate is an important factor that helps youth navigate some of these challenges and is predictive of positive development (Dahl, 2004; Masten, 2004). Self-regulation is characterized by the ability to plan, guide, and monitor one’s thoughts, feelings, behavior, and motivation to achieve self-set goals (Zimmerman, 2000). Although evidence shows that a number of youth contexts (family, school, athletics, etc.) can promote young people’s self-regulation skills, there is very little evidence on how recreation programs may act a context to foster self-regulation. Yet, recreation programs are well positioned to serve as an important context that can promote self-regulation skill development in youth. This article examines the literature on self-regulation, youth development, and recreation programming, and offers recreation professionals suggestions on how to support self-regulation in youth. We argue that practitioners should leverage fun and enjoyment, activities that have developmental attributes, and a positive social context to promote self-regulation. More specifically, the underlying developmental qualities within recreation activities that support self-regulatory skills are those that are goal oriented, challenging, and build skills. These types of activities provide the opportunity to engage in the cognitive processing, motivation, and self-directed behaviors that reflect effective self-regulation (Larson, 2000; Watts & Caldwell, 2008). Moreover, the social context within recreation programs provides meaningful opportunities for participants to build healthy adult-youth and peer relationships (Bocarro & Witt, 2003), which this relational mechanism is argued to be the basis for developing self-regulation. The social fabric inherent to these programs is well situated for adults to scaffold opportunities that teach youth how to plan, guide, and monitor their efforts towards achieving self-set goals. Collectively, it appears that both the activities and relational mechanisms integral to recreation programs are well situated to support self-regulation in youth, yet their intentional application to a recreation setting has received little attention. However, if recreation professionals intentionally and proactively work to promote self-regulation, their programs may directly address this critical aspect of positive youth development.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)
Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors
PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.
I understand that by submitting an article to Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Journal of Park and Recreation Administration to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).
THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT
Assignment of Copyright
I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.
Reversion of Rights
Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.
Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes
I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.
All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact Sagamore-Venture for further information.
In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.
Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.
Author Representations
- The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
- The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
- The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
- I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
- If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.