ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises and integrates two history-based content analysis studies related to leisure education in order to highlight the pervasive existence of the fundamental attribution error in leisure education research and to outline its problematic consequences. The fundamental attribution error occurs primarily in Euro-North American societies because of the dominant prevalence of individualistic values. This error is the tendency to overestimate dispositional or internal attributions of a person when explaining or modifying behaviour, and to underestimate the influence of environmental factors. In a span of approximately 30 years, there have been 159 leisure education learning components developed from 27 research studies in which leisure education was treated as an independent research variable. Of these 159 leisure learning components, only six components or just under 4" focused attention on changing environmental factors outside of the leisure education participants. Recommendations regarding future leisure education practice and research are provided.
