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Parents’ perspectives on their children’s outdoor risky play (ORP) can influence their engagement in it and the risk-navigation strategies they adopt. Until now, the perspectives of parents who regularly navigate threats to their safety, such as military members in combat arms occupations (CAOs) in the Canadian Armed Forces, and who have second-hand information on war and combat, such as female partners of members in CAOs, have been excluded from research. Conducting research with members in CAOs and their female partners can provide important understanding for experiences with risk, danger, injury, traditional gender roles, and ORP perspectives. I thus recruited and conducted semi-structured interviews with military members in CAOs (female = 1, male = 6) in the Canadian Armed Forces and 16 female partners of members actively serving in CAOs. Individuals could participate if they had a child in the 4-12 age range. I selected this age range for the study due to it being important for children’s adoption of safety strategies. I addressed three questions in stand-alone papers in my thesis: 1) “Do experiences in the military influence members’ in CAOs perspectives on their children’s ORP?”; 2) “What are military mothers’ perspectives on their children’s outdoor risky play and how may these perspectives be shaped by their military experiences?”; and 3) “How do gender expectations for female partners of members in CAOs influence their perspectives on children’s ORP?” I used risk and sociocultural theory to inform my approach to research questions 1 and 2 and conducted a reflexive thematic analysis. The results of my study addressing research question 1 were twofold: 1) Members in CAOs believe ORP provides children with opportunities that challenge excessive safety restrictions promoted in Canadian society; and (2) the work experiences of members in CAOs in the Canadian Armed Forces influenced their distinction between children’s ORP and dangerous play-related injuries. In response to research question 2, I found that female partners believed (1) ORP in close physical proximity to strangers and cars is dangerous for children; (2) ORP should not result in children experiencing serious injuries; and (3) outdoor risky play can teach children to assess and manage risks. I employed poststructural feminist theory, feminist methodologies, and critical discourse analysis to address question 3. My results were twofold: (1) Military mothers resist discursively produced pressures to subscribe to overprotective parenting during their children’s ORP; and (2) traditional gender discourses in Canadian society shape military mothers’ feelings of responsibility for their children’s ORP safety. The results from my research suggest that exposure to information on war and combat can influence parents’ perspectives on their children’s ORP. Further, they suggest that societal values, such as gender role expectations and pressure on mothers to engage in overprotective parenting, can influence parents’ fears for their children’s safety and the ORP they encourage and restrict.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the potential of a designed physical outdoor environment to improve the social environment and thereby enhance the psychological healing process at Psychiatric institutions. Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital situated in Pretoria West served as a model for testing the hypothesis. The physical and social environment at Weskoppies was analyzed through observations, interviews and literature research. Findings from analysis and theoretical research regarding the influences that physical and social outdoor environments have on mental health, were synthesized to establish design guidelines. These informed the design decision making process and assisted in the proposal of an outdoor environment with emotional healing potential. An open space framework and catalytic sketch plan was designed to illustrate the application of the design guidelines. The author found that an outdoor environment that encourage independence, purpose, consciousness, rest, connectedness and physical activities have the potential to enhance the psychological healing process. The open space framework and sketch plan proved that these guidelines can be accommodated on different scales. Copyright / Dissertation (ML(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted

A dissertation of submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Masters in Recreation and Tourism in the Department of Recreation and Tourism at the University of Zululand, 2009. / The fundamental aim of the study is to establish the outdoor recreation participation patterns in Umkhanyakude District. In other words the study wants to discover the role played by policy and practice in usage and community involvement in outdoor recreation in the study area. Among other things, the study is also carried out with a purpose of motivating the local community at Umkhanyakude, not only to participate in outdoor recreation activities, but conserve them for future generations to serve their physical, mental, spiritual and emotional needs. It was anticipated that the community would be aware that it is not only about recreation only, but also about boosting the economy of the study area and the entire Province of KwaZulu-Natal. The research study has therefore operated with the following objectives in mind: (a) To established the level of participation in outdoor recreation activities among the Umkhanyakude communities. (b) To investigate the adequacy and provision of outdoor recreation facilities in the study area. (c) To ascertain the strategies or management practices used by the Umkhanyakude Municipality to encourage local communities to be involved in outdoor recreation activities. (d) To indicate the perceived types of policies existing in the study area as well as their level of implementation. (e) To establish the community’s perceived benefits of participating in outdoor recreation activities in the study area. The study has also identified related hypotheses towards finding answers to the research question. The method of collecting, analysing and interpreting data involved computer manipulating of data utilizing the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). The findings of this study reveal that most of the stated objectives were met, some were supported some were not. Fundamentally, the research project had tried to reveal how policy and practice play a role in addressing outdoor recreation participation, provision, strategic management and community benefits. On the whole, the majority of stakeholders have viewed strategies for benefitting the previously disadvantaged communities as an appropriate policy to address inequalities from the past. In essence the findings are that the people of Umkhanyakude Municipality are positive towards outdoor recreation participation in the future. Whereas the minority of the respondents felt that the provision of facilities was adequate. Some of these recreation facilities were also perceived to be located far away, run down and/or poorly maintained. Another important finding is that whereas recreation officials were of the view that recreation management practices in the study area were good and well implemented, the majority of recreators and local communities thought that the recreation management practices were poor and not in line with recreation development principles. Another set of objectives-based findings indicated that recreation officials thought that the existence of policies and their implementation was good. On the same opinion, the majority of recreators and local communities felt that these policies and their implementation were indeed poor. Additionally, the majority of respondents prominently specified that they would rather benefit from skills development, employment opportunities and infrastructural development. These were more functional variables preferred by respondents than otherwise. Finally, the research inquiry came up with recommendations which sought to ameliorate the negative findings, more specifically on the role of policy formulation and its implementation. Some of these findings relate to factors such as participation, provision, strategic management and community benefits, which have induced recommendations such as development of new strategies, accessibility of outdoor recreation facilities, organising of recreation awareness campaigns, introduce a new curriculum on recreation and tourism.

The out-of-doors is being utilized increasingly by school personnel for developing programs to extend the classroom to include the natural environment. It is hoped that a climate for learning, enriched with direct laboratory experiences, will establish a situation where all students benefit. This study is concerned with the investigation of students’ attitudes and self-concepts following such an outdoor school experience. The students selected for this study attended a sixth grade class from one of the following Oregon schools: Holy Redeemer and George, of Portland; Eastham, located in Oregon City, and Rainier located in the town of Rainier. The test group spent six days at an outdoor school, situated in Colton, Oregon. Data was secured from one-hundred and thirty-one sixth grade boys and girls from lower to high socioeconomic backgrounds. The instruments used to measure and evaluate the response of the group were: (1) An Attitude Scale, containing sixteen items, that would demonstrate students’ values toward the natural environment. (2) A Concept Scale I, with fifteen items, that showed responses to what the students thought of himself. (3) A Concept Scale II, that recorded the students’ responses to how they thought others viewed them. This scale contained fifteen items. (4) A diary was constructed to record the unsolicited comments from the students that attended Holy Redeemer School. The design of the study included testing all the students two weeks before the outdoor experience and five weeks after by means of the Attitude Scale and the two Concept Scales. An item analysis of the students’ diaries was made to record any values that may have been mentioned. A statistical level of reliability was calculated on each of the school groups after the posttest. From the results of this investigation, the following conclusions seemed justified: The experience of the out-door school provides opportunities that affect the attitudes of students toward the natural environment in a positive way. The outdoor school increases relationships that are conducive to the attainment of favorable self-concepts in the participants. The experience of the outdoor school had a positive, measurable effect, on the students as a group, after a prolonged period of time.

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