Behind the Words: Visual Insights into Students’ Perception of University Study of Tourism, Leisure, and Recreation

Abstract

The loss of previously distinct contours in the area of tourism, leisure, and recreation is evident through the penetration of health, sport, hospitality, economic, and management elements into the discipline. Here we use the term “recreology” and ask how students understand and depict it in visual representations. The analysis of visual artifacts (n = 47) reveals a rich thematic and semantic breadth of elements, phenomena, and symbols depicted. The study of recreology can then be presented in three main types of representations, the first as sport (adventure) tourism, the second as personal development, and the third in a strongly abstract and diverse treatment of variedness. This richness makes it possible to use in tourism education not only Aristotle’s terms for the intellectual virtues techné, phronesis, and episteme, but also the hitherto unused nous and sophia.