Tania Jane Wiseman

• Occupational Therapy, Leisure Studies
• Associate professor at Swansea University

Purpose The occupation of gardening has historically generated a wealth of literature. Although espousing its positive impact on wellbeing, evidence is typically anecdotal in nature, with only one major synthesis of reliable evidence to date. This study sought to explore people's experiences and personal meanings of gardening within the literature,...

Gardening is widely used in promoting recovery and wellness. The use of gardening as a medium within therapy has a long history, and there is evidence of its effectiveness (York and Wiseman 2012). The focus in this chapter is on the purpose of gardening as an occupational therapy intervention (OTI). Gardening is a normal authentic common activity t...

Background / Purpose: Extra care housing in the United Kingdom provides a safe, supported and sociable environment in later life. Existing studies have highlighted the physiological, psychological and social benefits of gardens as sites of leisure in later life, but there has only been limited research into how the design of gardens in extra care...

Background: Gardening is an activity of daily living that can be a source of pride, or embarrassment. People will go without essentials to pay a gardener rather than upset the neighbours with a scruffy garden, or attract unwelcome visitors (Richards 2006). This study aims to explore individual’s reaction to the lived or anticipated experience of lo...

Learning through simulation and enquiry-based learning – a joined up approach. Introduction: The use of simulation in Occupational Therapy education has been shown to increase engagement, and opportunities to experience more authentic healthcare experiences (Grant et al, 2021). For students at Swansea University the simulations were completed in...

Supporting professional development through peer group reflection in a part time initial practice placement. This session will discuss the experiences of a new practice placement model. This new model aims to support the sustainability of placements through reduced weekly practice placement time coupled with structured peer reflection for students...

A paradigm shift to working to protect the leisure of people in later life from the machinery of growth and consumption is needed. Recognition of the rational instrumental drivers behind active ageing is overdue, research in this area could be about enhancing quality of life, instead it focuses on how to make lives cost less. This book offers a mod...

The great crisis facing our age is not a tsunami of resource hungry centenarians. It is the struggle to balance freedom and belonging, winning and love, doing and being, performing and relaxing, producing and consuming. For leisure to enable the construction of agentic stories, an element of subjective freedom is essential. Instrumental leisure sap...

The archive is vast, and choosing participants and materials is particularly difficult. Anyone that wrote for five directives, including a lifeline, and four one-day diaries from 2014 to 2015 was considered for inclusion. This selected 26 people that were retired in 2008. All of the correspondents explain what it is currently like to be in later li...

Leisure studies, leisure science and critical gerontology are the three main disciplinary fields that are synthesised and evaluated. Leisure constraints theory, with its roots in the 1960s outdoors recreation movement, offers ways of understanding why people do not do ‘what is good for them’. This selection of everyday leisure research suggests tha...

People negotiate leisure in the context of everyday lives from the refuge of home, they are connected and engaged with life through ‘windows on the world’ that enable participation in the social world. They care deeply about others and find ways to contribute to society while managing the patronising attitudes of others. They introducing ideas abou...

Narrative inquiry focuses on understanding how lives are lived. Stories are designed, told and interpreted for many functions and are historically situated. Negotiation of constraints is more widely understood in a constructivist paradigm. A person lives a life, and that life involves understanding and applying the rules and regulations and norms o...

The introduction explores a new population of people in later life. They do not really plan for their later life but anticipate participating in generally ‘active’ leisure. However, what they mainly do is engage in passive pastimes. Despite this inactivity they are enjoying continued good health and high levels of life satisfaction. There are two p...

This book analyses leisure choice as a complex concept, made more complicated in later life than at any other time. The author posits that there are many unanswered questions about the new booming generation of healthy, older people, and this book asks what it is really like to be old at the beginning of the 21st century in the United Kingdom, anal...

The rhythmic cycle of the seasons can help to connect us to a better future. View the article here: https://theconversation.com/how-to-connect-with-nature-and-improve-your-mental-health-this-winter-151161

Walking is widely endorsed by health promotion strategists as a means to improve the health of the nation. However, little is known about the value of walking beyond the physiological and psychological benefits. This research seeks to contribute to our understanding of the manifold benefits provided by walking in the British countryside and implica...

Introduction: Garden visiting, as described in this study, involves visiting private gardens which householders have temporarily opened to the public, in support of charity. In the United Kingdom, garden visiting is a popular occupation which attracts 750,000 people each year. The connections between active gardening and wellbeing are well establis...

Growing health: Integration of food growing into the National Health Service. Session 53 - Innovative practice: 53.4 College of occupational therapists annual conference, 3-5th June 2014. Facilitated poster discussion presentation. Abstract published in proceedings.

Evidence supporting the therapeutic value of gardening is vast, scattered across a broad range of disciplines, and mainly anecdotal in nature (Sempik et al 2003). The last synthesis of supporting evidence was last carried out by Sempik et al in 2003. This meta-ethnography was carried out in order to gather qualitative studies. 4 papers, out of 214,...

Evidence suggests that people with Parkinson's disease can experience difficulties participating in occupations. This article describes a qualitative study that explored how seven people with Parkinson's disease perceived their participation in occupations. The analysis of the semi-structured interviews led to the identification of three themes: ch...