Examination of academic's opinions on recreation education

Recreation education is thought to have an important role in individuals' managing their time, increasing their quality of life, and renewing them psychologically and physiologically. In this research, it was designed to examine the views of academics working in the field of recreation and to propose solutions to the problems related to recreation education. METHOD The study group of the research consists of 25 academicians working in the field of recreation, selected with the maximum diversity sampling technique, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. Interview method, one of the qualitative data collection methods, was used in the research. The interviews in the research were carried out through the Zoom program due to the pandemic process. In the research, there are questions about personal information (age, gender, marital status, etc.) and semi-structured interview questions prepared by the researcher as a data collection tool. Using the descriptive and content analysis of the collected data, modeling with the NVIVO package program, themes were created and presented. RESULTS and CONCLUSION In the findings obtained in the research, it was seen that the male and female academicians participating in the research were between the ages of 35-66 and had various academic titles. Although there were a total of 6 questions asked to the participants in the research, the meaning of recreation education according to academics was 8 themes, the problems of recreation education at universities were 8 themes, 7 themes were restructuring in recreation education, social and individual achievements of recreation education were 17 themes, public and private 9 themes were found for cooperation with sectors and 15 themes were found under the titles where recreation specialists find employment opportunities. The themes of the short titles include a value to the individual and society, the absence of a recreational culture, creating employment, recreation areas plans, digitalization, recreation specialists, etc. themes emerged. As a result, it has been concluded that the recreational education in universities is not sufficient, there is a need for restructuring to improve the educational content, and employment problems due to lack of education are seen. It has emerged that the public and private sector collaborations with universities are weak and that academics who are experts in the field of recreation need to provide training depending on the course content created specifically for the field. Key words: recreation education, academician, innovation, employment