Review of Recent Literature about Leisure Time of School-Aged Children and Youth in Croatia

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems 22(1), 25-58, 2024 REVIEW OF RECENT LITERATURE ABOUT LEISURE TIME OF SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN CROATIA Ivana Katavić1, *, Bruno Matijašević2, Petar Marija Radelj3, Josip Stepanić4 and Mislav Stjepan Žebec5 1 Center of Excellence of the Split-Dalmatia County Split, Croatia 1 2 Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek, Croatia 1 3 Zagreb, Croatia 4 University of Zagreb Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture Zagreb, Croatia 1 5 Institute for Anthropological Research Zagreb, Croatia 1 DOI: 10.7906/indecs.22.1.2 Review article Received: 23 November 2023. Accepted: 25 February 2024. ABSTRACT This review covers peer-reviewed publications about free time of school-aged children and youth in Croatia, published since 1990. We briefly present these publications and extract their common points. Based on that, we suggest possible addition to leisure time activities of school-aged children and youth. KEY WORDS free time, leisure time, Croatia, children and youth, problem solving CLASSIFICATION JEL: I21, J13 *Corresponding author, : ; -; *Centar izvrsnosti Splitsko-dalmatinske županije, Ruđera Boškovića 25, HR – 21 000 Split, Croatia I. Katavić, B. Matijašević, P.M. Radelj, J. Stepanić and M.S. Žebec INTRODUCTION Free time is an important part of lives of school-aged children and youth [1-9]. Many researchers approached that notion, in order to characterise it, to contextualise it, to understand whether there exists a universal form or many specific forms of free time, to analyse or propose its structurisation and to address other topics related to that notion [1-4]. Additional topic is the free time structure. How to describe it? Is there some optimal form? Does that structure change over time? If it changes, does it change primarily because of a persons’ age, because of changes on societal level, or because of some other reason? Moreover, are the answers to stated questions universal, or differ among communities? The structure criterion is one of the main scientific and research starting points for determining the quality of free time. Although, in addition to the structure, the quality of free time is also defined by other micro and macro systemic factors, it has been shown that the structure of free time is of great importance for the potential development benefits of children and young people. Until now, the Croatian scientific framework has dealt with research that goes in the direction of analysis and research of the basic structure of free time. Despite the valuable scientific conclusions derived from these analyses, the interdisciplinary field of free time brings limited scientific results in relation to the world science of free time, which advances both scientific evidence of the optimality of free time for children and young people, as well as practical implications. Although international research is important and provides valid scientific research guidelines, scientific conclusions are not always applicable to every area of free time presence due to the cultural determinants of free time. From this comes the importance of scientific research on free time in Croatia. Our long-term objective is to contribute to better structuration of the leisure time, as part of a free time of children and youth. This article is our starting point in achieving the stated objective. It analyses existing, recent literature about free time of school-aged children and youth in Croatia. However, because time spent in school and time spent in conducting school-related tasks (e.g. homework and learning) are important and significant parts of childhood and adolescence, there is a diffuse boundary between them and the free time. In particular, here we consider free time as consisting of leisure time, time for out-of-school activities and time for out-of-class activities. Before proceeding, let us note that majority of approaches utilise definition of free time formulated by J.R. Kelly [8; pp.54-55] or J. Dumazedier [8; p.66], which is why we do not address here the definition of free time in details. It is important to characterise the texts included. We included texts from 1990, as that year mark the beginning of significant political and societal changes, which rather soon brought about correspondingly significant changes in the education and overall, in relation between the society in general and its youth. Since we restrict the review to free time of school-aged children and youth, further in the text we will assume that children and youth attend primary or secondary school, if not stated otherwise. However, some of the literature encountered is not devoted precisely for them, the children and youth in schools. In order to gain a broader and better insight into free time, apart from the population included in the regular education system, this paper provides an insight into free time that applies to young people outside the education system as well as adults. One must be aware that free time is important for children and youth primarily because of its role in their formation. Because of that, during free time many important processes take place, such as value formation, socialisation, sub(culture) adoption, various aspects of risky behaviour, etc. Articles which explicitly cover such topics, but do not contextualise it clearly in a free time, are not covered here. 26 Review of recent literature about leisure time of school-aged children and youth in Croatia Although it includes all important relevant scientific conclusions about free time, this work does not show the historical context of free time and does not deal with historical facts related to free time in general. We tried to represent included articles with mentioning briefly their main points, however, we are aware that it cannot be optimally done and consider that this review will serve the readers as starting point for their reading of the covered literature. While on the one hand we extensively searched the publications related to that topic, we are aware that some of the publications could be missing from the presented collection. In a small part we purposefully avoided publications that were prepared for specific purposes and are shortened versions of other publications presented here. Despite our efforts, it is possible that we unintentionally missed some of the publications devoted to the topic of free time of children and youth in Croatia. In the second section we present an extensive list of such a literature, and briefly characterise it. Third section concludes the article and provides a particular perpsective. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE There are the following forms of the literature about free time of school-aged children and youth in Croatia: monographs, proceedings and project reports, and articles. As an introductory, yet summarising text of existing needs and constrai (...truncated)