A Model Of Adolescents’ Self-exploration In Leisure

Leisure is a significant domain in adolescents’ lives, which can contribute to their identity development and personal growth. Engagement in leisure activities provides youngsters with the opportunities to involve in a process of exploration that is at the heart of identity formation. This paper presents a model of self–exploration in leisure that involves an ongoing process of self-discovery, self-construction and appraisal. The model comprises seven components of leisure pursuit, namely investment, positive and negative affect, obstacles to activity pursuit, desires, personal gains and recognition of own character. Adolescents are committed to leisure activities in terms of time, effort, and energy. In pursuing their most important and interesting leisure activity, they experienced pleasant and unpleasant emotions and faced some hurdles. Activity pursuit enhancing adolescents’ learning, and broaden their self-awareness while providing them with a platform for unitizing and expressing potentials. Increased self-understanding also facilitates adolescents’ planning for future. Self-exploration is evident in adolescents’ choice of activity, commitment to the choice, awareness of outcome resulted from activity pursuit, and constant appraisal of current activity engagement with the formulation of corresponding future plans. Engagement in leisure is considered as social environment in which adolescents are exposed to new role models, experience new activities, encounter novel ideas, and engage in social interaction with adults and peers. Adults like coaches, instructors and seasoned co-participants help to scaffold adolescents’ exploratory journeys. This model was developed based on an empirical study on leisure pursuits involving Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. The Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM) was distributed to 1110 senior secondary school students of 10 schools geographically distributed around Hong Kong. When completing the questionnaire, students were asked to refer to their most important and interesting leisure activity. Using purposeful sampling based on the criteria of gender, type of activity, duration of engagement and the overall SLIM score, 75 students were invited to participate in individual interviews. Employing a phenomenological research design, face-to-face in-depth, semi structured interviews were conducted to understand students’ leisure pursuits and to find out the manifestation of self-exploration in such pursuits. Coding and theme analysis were performed to map out students’ leisure pursuits and identify the essences of self-exploration in these pursuits. This paper discusses the significance of this model in students’ packed schedule of mandated activities that provide few opportunities for self-direction and initiative. Recommendations are made to incorporate such model into leisure education programs within educational settings.

Acessar