Geographical Association

This activity explores the cultural implications of learning opportunities and social interactions which take place outside the work environment.

Before looking at some geography perspectives, let's consider the overarching aims of the curriculum.

It is important to acknowledge that successful learners participate in learning activities at home and during leisure pursuits. Their experiences are not restricted to school and genuinely confident individuals display these characteristics in a variety of settings. Their actions demonstrating responsible citizenship connect learning with a wide range of activities in and out of school.

Read the 29 sub-aims of the curriculum and identify those most relevant to learners' leisure and pastimes and where you would like to make this link in geography.

Curriculum opportunities of Geography

Students should be offered the following opportunities that are integral to their learning and enhance their engagement with the concepts, processes and content of the subject.

1. Build on and expand their personal experiences of geography
2. Explore real and relevant contemporary contexts
3. Use a range of approaches to enquiries
4. Use varied resources, including maps, visual media and geographical information systems
5. Undertake fieldwork investigations in different locations outside the classroom, individually and as part of a team
6. Participate in informed responsible action in relation to geographical issues that affect them and those around them
7. Examine geographical issues in the news
8. Investigate important issues of relevance to the UK and globally using a range of skills, including ICT
9. Make links between geography and other subjects, including citizenship and ICT, and areas of the curriculum including sustainability and global dimension.

Source: Geography Programme of Study

Refer to the geography curriculum opportunities and make explicit cross-references to your own scheme of work/learning.

In addition to the current connections, suggest new areas where you could establish links between the learning activities and aspects of community cohesion and diversity.

Keep these notes as your baseline review for later consideration in this course.

It is worth checking the geographical vocabulary you use and if anything varies from commonly used words, you may need to explain this to your students.

It should also be noted that leisure and pastimes are a popular topic for learning in English and Modern Foreign Languages, based on the assumption that learners will talk or write more fluently about things they are interested in. There is potential therefore for a co-ordinated approach with other subjects.

Contemporary meanings

• Free time - 'leisure is the weekend'
• Recreational activity - 'leisure is watching TV'
• Attitude - 'leisure is making the most out of my life'

Source: Michelangelo (2008) Pastimes

Use this simple classification to initiate discussion with your students about their views.

• Formerly the activities of the rich, leisure activities are now the expectation of the masses.
• Leisure expressions are diverse - a consequence of increased discretionary income.
• Leisure experiences have increased in quality.
• In leisure, we continually compare our lifestyle and possessions to others.
• Spending money for leisure goods and experiences is the standard of belonging.

Source: Michelangelo (2008) Pastimes

How do these conceptions confirm or contradict your own understanding of the role of leisure and pastimes?

Identify how you might expect students' ideas about leisure to differ.

Consider how these notions relate to the individual, the family and the community.

There is much that is fluid or uncertain about motivation and purpose in leisure and pastimes. Most exercise-related time is perceived to be concerned with personal fitness and health and yet, curiously, it is often attached to social activities of a contradictory nature such as over-eating and drinking.

We refer to our 'spare time' yet we find ever increasing opportunities to consume many hours of it, complaining that we never have enough time.

There are two significant areas of tension in how leisure and pastimes feature in our lives. Neither of these is fixed or fact but they are important to consider with students.

Women's inequity in leisure

• Less time and priority
• Combining role obligations
• At home and unstructured
• Fragmented
• Do not feel entitled

Explanations for differences in leisure participation among ethnic groups

• Marginality thesis - a function of lack of opportunity
• Ethnicity thesis - culturally based value systems, norms, and socialisation patterns

Source: Michelangelo (2008) Pastimes

Photo by Flickr user chrisschuepp provided for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence

'The 2001 Census revealed that the UK today is more culturally diverse than ever before. The 4.6 million people from a variety of non-White backgrounds are not evenly distributed across the country, tending to live in the large urban areas. The different groups share some characteristics but there are often greater differences between the individual ethnic groups than between the minority ethnic population as a whole and the White British people.' - Office for National Statistics, Focus on Ethnicity & Identity

How might you develop these ideas and issues in your geography lessons as a contribution towards learning about community cohesion?

Revisit your consideration of living geography in the first course. Show how you have linked your students' experiences in leisure and pastimes to their learning about community cohesion and diversity.

Exploration of these sources is supplementary to the course completion time.

Museum visits

'First, although there has been a rise in visiting among those who might be described as being "socially excluded", the most significant impact on visiting appears to have been among those groups who traditionally have always gone to museums and galleries.

People with a degree are almost four times as likely as those with no formal qualifications to say that they know charges have been scrapped and have made more visits as a result.

The issue which will continue to face museums and galleries is the extent to which they should concentrate on trying to persuade the remaining "absentees" to come through the door, or to focus on their current, committed audiences.'

Source: Martin, A (2003) The Impact of Free Entry to Museums, MORI

Ling Wong, J. (1998) Ethnic Environmental Participation, Llanberis, Black

Environmental Network

Farooq, Samaya and Griggs, Gerald  (2008) Girls from ethnic minorities: sports participation, PE and Sports Today, August 2008 

See also The Geography of My Stuff on the Geography Teaching Today website

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