From Green Space to Social Space: Teaching Welfare Through Observational Field Work

From Green Space to Social Space: Teaching Welfare Through Observational Field Work

Bio: With over 30 years of EFL experience, Maria Lisak, EdD works at Chosun University, where she teaches social entrepreneurship in English using experiential learning and sociocultural approaches. Her work integrates constructivist and emancipatory frameworks, with research focusing on funds of knowledge, Gwangju as Method, and social justice education. She also designs educational technologies and materials for diverse ESP contexts, linking classroom practice with community needs. Her current interests include literacy, culture, and language education, and participatory frameworks for teacher wellbeing. Her interdisciplinary work invites reflection on multimodal pedagogies, material making, and context-driven innovation in borderland spaces.

Abstract

This paper examines a pedagogical approach that uses green space observation to teach undergraduate students critical concepts in welfare administration studies. Sixty-one sophomore students in a welfare administration course conducted systematic inquiry observations of public parks and green spaces in Gwangju, South Korea, analyzing them as welfare infrastructure through the lens of public goods theory. Through repeated field observations and structured reflection, students discovered four key insights: (1) the gap between theoretical definitions of public goods and their conditional accessibility in practice, (2) temporal stratification in which different demographic groups access welfare benefits at different times, (3) the distinction between physical co-presence and genuine social infrastructure, and (4) forms of exclusion that exist despite formal openness. The assignment successfully developed students' ability to see mundane urban spaces as sites of welfare provision and helped them recognize that welfare operates through practice, not merely policy. This approach demonstrates how fieldwork-based pedagogy can bridge the gap between abstract welfare administration concepts and lived social reality.

Keywords: welfare administration education, public goods, green space, observational methods, field notes, experiential learning, social infrastructure

Introduction

How do we teach undergraduate students to think critically about welfare infrastructure that surrounds them daily but remains largely invisible? Public green spaces—parks, playgrounds, walking trails, riversides—are ubiquitous features of urban life (Pincetl & Gearin, 2005). Yet students rarely consider them as deliberate welfare resources or analyze the complex ways they distribute benefits across different populations.

This pedagogical challenge is particularly acute when teaching concepts like "public goods," which students often encounter as abstract economic definitions: non-excludable (people cannot easily be kept out) and non-rivalrous (one person's use does not reduce availability for others) (Oakland, 1987). Without grounding these concepts in observable reality, students struggle to understand how welfare actually operates in practice, where formal policy meets messy social life.

This paper presents a two-stage pedagogical approach designed for a sophomore-level welfare administration course at a Korean university. The assignment asked students to conduct systematic observations of local green spaces, document usage patterns through field notes, and analyze their findings using public goods theory and welfare concepts. Through this process, students moved from naive description to critical analysis, learning to see how welfare infrastructure works—and fails to work—for different groups in their community.

The assignment succeeded in several ways. First, it taught students that theoretical categories are useful but insufficient: public goods in practice are conditional, contingent, and often exclusionary despite formal openness. Second, it revealed patterns of temporal stratification, showing students that green spaces function as "time-share commons" where different groups access benefits at different times rather than simultaneously. Third, it helped students distinguish between mere co-presence in public space and genuine social infrastructure that fosters care, connection, and community. Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, students developed sophisticated recognition of subtle exclusions—including safety concerns related to nighttime use and alcohol consumption—without positioning their critique as cultural criticism.

This approach builds on established traditions of experiential learning (Kolb, 2014) and ethnographic pedagogy while specifically targeting welfare concepts. By starting with students' lived environments and providing conceptual tools to analyze what they observe, the assignment makes visible the social infrastructure that shapes daily life. The paper proceeds as follows: I first describe the pedagogical design and theoretical framework, then analyze patterns that emerged across 61 student observation reports, and finally discuss implications for teaching welfare administration studies.

Pedagogical Design and Theoretical Framework

Assignment Structure

The green space observation project spanned a week of coursework and consisted of two main stages:

Stage 1: Individual Observation and Analysis (Homework)

Students selected one public green space—such as a park, riverside walkway, university lawn, or playground—and visited it at least twice at different times of day or on different days of the week. During each 15-20 minute observation session, they recorded field notes documenting:

Date, time, weather conditions, and atmosphere
Who was present (children, elders, workers, students, families, etc.)
Activities observed (jogging, playing, resting, socializing, etc.)
Facilities used (benches, playground equipment, exercise stations, paths)
Patterns of interaction between different groups
Personal impressions and questions

Students then wrote a 600-1000 word analytical report connecting their observations to welfare concepts, specifically examining:

How the space functions (or fails to function) as a public good
Patterns of leisure and health access across different groups
The role of social infrastructure in fostering community connection
Evidence of inclusion or exclusion in practice

To support observational rigor, I provided explicit instruction through two "side lessons" embedded in the assignment. Side Lesson 1 taught field note methodology, emphasizing factual documentation over interpretation and encouraging shorthand notation during observation. Side Lesson 2 explained public goods theory, providing concrete examples to distinguish truly public goods from excludable or rivalrous resources, and asking students to consider whether green spaces meet theoretical criteria in practice.

Stage 2: Collaborative Analysis and Empathy-Building (In-Class)

In-class work consisted of three modules:

Module A (Categorize Your Field Notes): Students worked in pairs to share key observations and organize their field notes into categories, identifying patterns, similarities, and surprising outliers across their different sites.
Module B (Role Perspectives): In small groups, students adopted specific roles—elder, child, worker, foreigner, unhoused person—and discussed what would be most valuable, most problematic, and most needed in green spaces from that perspective. The instructor convened focus groups where each demographic segment presented their needs to a simulated government committee.
Module C (Imagine a New Public Good): Originally planned to have students design innovative public goods inspired by international examples, this module was dropped due to time constraints.

This two-stage design deliberately scaffolded student learning. Individual observation developed their capacity to notice and document social patterns. Collaborative categorization helped them recognize broader patterns beyond their single site. Role-taking exercises built empathy for diverse welfare needs and challenged students to think beyond their own experiences as young, able-bodied university students.

Theoretical Framework: Public Goods and Social Infrastructure

The assignment positioned green spaces at the intersection of two welfare concepts:

Public Goods Theory provides economic criteria for resources that should be collectively provided. A pure public good is both non-excludable (no one can be prevented from using it) and non-rivalrous (multiple people can use it simultaneously without diminishing its availability). Classic examples include national defense, streetlights, and clean air. Parks theoretically meet these criteria: they are open to all, and one person sitting on a bench or walking a trail does not prevent others from doing the same.

However, as students would discover, this theoretical purity breaks down in practice. Facilities like swings or benches can become competitive when demand exceeds supply. Social norms, safety perceptions, and temporal patterns create soft exclusions even when formal barriers are absent. The assignment thus invited students to test abstract definitions against messy reality.

Social Infrastructure refers to the physical spaces and organizations that shape social interaction, care, and community solidarity. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2018) defines social infrastructure as "the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact." Well-designed social infrastructure—libraries, community centers, public squares—facilitates connection across difference and strengthens democratic participation. Poorly designed or neglected infrastructure reproduces inequality and isolation.

Green spaces function as social infrastructure when they bring diverse groups together, enable informal care (parents supervising children, neighbors chatting), and create opportunities for collective life. Yet mere co-presence does not guarantee meaningful interaction. The assignment asked students to observe not just who was present but how people interacted—or failed to interact—across lines of age, class, and social position.

By combining these frameworks, students learned to analyze green spaces simultaneously as economic resources (are they truly public goods?) and social resources (do they foster community welfare?). This dual lens revealed how welfare operates at the intersection of policy design and everyday practice.

What Students Learned to See: Four Key Insights

Analysis of 61 observation reports reveals four major patterns in student learning. These insights demonstrate how fieldwork-based pedagogy (Morrissey et al., 2013) helps students develop sophisticated welfare consciousness.

1. The Theory-Practice Gap: When Public Goods Become Conditional

Nearly every student began their analysis by affirming that green spaces are indeed public goods, noting free access and shared use. However, through careful observation, most students discovered significant limitations to this theoretical characterization.

Competition for Facilities

Students repeatedly documented rivalry for specific amenities despite overall abundance of space. Student 1 observed Gwangju Citizens' Park and noted: "The running track in the park is a public facility that anyone can use freely without charge, but the snack stand requires a purchase to use... In the summer, the park can become crowded with people enjoying water activities." This report identifies how some facilities remain purely public (the track) while others require payment (the snack stand), and how temporal factors (summer crowds) transform non-rivalrous space into competitive terrain.

Student 2's observations at Uncheon Reservoir revealed similar dynamics: "On weekend mornings, benches, shaded areas, and playgrounds became competitive resources due to crowding. This shows that the space is not purely a public good in practice." This analysis explicitly challenges the theoretical definition, noting that practical scarcity creates exclusion even in formally open spaces.

Student 3 documented rivalry at a playground: "Since swings and slides—facilities children frequently used—were not installed in multiple numbers, many children could not use them simultaneously, and thus the non-rivalrous nature of public goods did not fully apply in practice." This observation reveals how infrastructure design decisions shape whether theoretical public goods function as such in reality.

Social Exclusion Despite Physical Access

Multiple students documented the presence of marginalized individuals who were physically present but socially isolated. Student 4 observed along Gwangju Stream: "I also noticed one unhoused person resting quietly near the riverbank, who appeared disconnected from the surrounding activities... the unhoused individual was physically present but socially marginalized." This observation distinguishes between formal non-excludability (the person could enter) and substantive exclusion (the person remained isolated and stigmatized).

Student 3 analyzed a playground where a dog's presence created discomfort: "The parent who felt uncomfortable with the dog, effectively excluded. Moreover, since swings and slides were not installed in multiple numbers, many children could not use them simultaneously... the 'right to play together with a pet' and the 'right to feel comfortable without a pet' coexist, revealed that public goods are not always fully inclusive."

Students also identified accessibility barriers for people with disabilities. Student 2 noted: "Accessibility for people with disabilities also seemed limited" at Uncheon Reservoir. Student 5 observed at a cultural park: "Citizens who voluntarily practice public values, such as performance preparation teams and garbage collectors, do not receive attention... regrettable in terms of joint responsibility and recognition of welfare." This analysis extends beyond physical access to consider social recognition as a dimension of inclusion.

Weather and Time as Exclusionary Factors

Several students documented how environmental and temporal factors create exclusion despite formal openness. Student 6 observed riverside trails across three visits: "Weekend afternoon (Rainy): There were no people. When it rains a lot, the water in the river rises and access is restricted, and even if it rains a little, there were no people because of the weather." Weather dependency means that welfare benefits disappear precisely when they might be most needed.

Student 7 observed a university athletic field on two occasions: "On a rainy afternoon, the space became inaccessible to all, regardless of age or status. This shows that welfare benefits in such spaces are conditional and fragile." This reflection demonstrates sophisticated understanding that public goods can vanish under certain conditions, rendering them unreliable as welfare infrastructure.

Pedagogical Significance

These observations show students moving beyond textbook definitions to recognize conditionality in practice. They learned that "public good" is not a binary category but a spectrum shaped by infrastructure design, social norms, temporal patterns, and environmental factors. This insight is foundational to critical welfare analysis: understanding the gap between formal policy and lived experience.

2. Temporal Stratification: The Time-Share Commons

Perhaps the most striking pattern across student observations was the discovery that green spaces function as "time-share commons"—different demographic groups access welfare benefits at different times rather than simultaneously.

Weekday Morning: Elder-Dominated Exercise Space

Students who observed during weekday mornings consistently found elderly people as the primary users. Student 8 visited a walking trail at 12:38 PM on Friday: "The largest group consists of people who appear to be in their 60s and 70s. They are walking in pairs or small groups of three, or walking alone... Most people (the elderly) are walking at a leisurely pace while chatting. Office workers and university students walk at a relatively fast pace."

Student 9 observed Pungam Lake Park on Friday at 7:00 PM: "Many seemed to be office workers jogging or using outdoor exercise equipment... Families with children were almost absent, and there were few elderly people. The overall atmosphere was calm and focused on individual activities."

Weekend Daytime: Family-Centered Leisure

Weekend observations revealed dramatic shifts toward family groups with children. Student 2 contrasted his two visits to Uncheon Reservoir: "Visit 1... Saturday morning... Families and elderly shared the same space... Visit 2... Friday evening... the park served less as a social gathering space and more as a personal leisure and health space."

Student 10 documented this pattern at Sandonggyo Park: "On a weekend afternoon when the daytime sunshine was still warm, the park was much more lively than the day before... Family units, couples, and friends filled the park... Children also played naturally with friends they met for the first time."

Evening: Youth and Workers

Evening observations showed spaces dominated by young adults and workers seeking stress relief. Student 8's 7:30 PM visit revealed: "It was mostly people in their 20s to 40s in workout clothes, jogging or walking briskly after work. There were couples holding hands and people walking their dogs, but most were focused on their own activities."

Student 11 observed at 11 PM and found a different population entirely: "A group of foreign residents had gathered. They were sitting together, laughing, and celebrating someone's birthday... three adults who appeared to be intoxicated walking through the park, singing and talking loudly."

Analytical Synthesis

Student 8 explicitly theorized this pattern: "During the day, the biggest beneficiaries are the elderly, who have relatively more free time to enjoy nature in the city. In contrast, most office workers and students find it difficult to enjoy such leisure unless it is a weekend or holiday. The evening, however, is the opposite. It becomes the perfect place for workers to exercise or relieve stress after their day is done. But at this time, elderly people or families with young children are rarely seen."

This temporal stratification has important welfare implications. It means green spaces do provide benefits to diverse groups, but not simultaneously or equally. Elderly people, who have daytime availability but may feel unsafe at night, access different welfare benefits than workers who only have evening hours free. Families with children must compete for space on crowded weekends. Each group experiences the "public good" differently based on their temporal constraints.

Pedagogical Significance

Students learned that welfare access is shaped not just by formal policy but by practical constraints of work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, and safety perceptions. This insight challenges simplistic notions of universal access and helps students understand why formal openness does not guarantee equitable benefit distribution.

3. Civil Inattention vs. Moments of Connection

Students carefully documented patterns of social interaction—or lack thereof—in public spaces. Most observations revealed what sociologist Erving Goffman (2017) termed "civil inattention": people sharing space while politely ignoring one another.

The Dominant Pattern: Parallel Activities

Student 8 explicitly used sociological vocabulary: "This trail is not the kind of place where strangers strike up conversations. Most people displayed an attitude that could be called 'civil inattention,' which simply means politely ignoring one another." This observation demonstrates sophisticated recognition that public space does not automatically generate community.

Student 5 noted at a cultural park: "Overall quiet atmosphere, many individual activities... Families form private spaces... Loose interaction between performers and audience... Mothers keep some distance from children, separate activities." Even in a shared space, groups remained socially bounded.

Student 12 observed Pungnyeongil Park: "Activities were separated by generation, and there was little deep interaction among groups... Students in school uniforms sat with friends chatting or looking at their phones, while office workers took brisk walks on their way home... Overall, activities were separated by generation, and there was little deep interaction among groups."

Multiple students noted that interaction occurred primarily within pre-existing groups—families, friends, elderly cohorts—rather than across demographic lines. Student 13 observed: "Children played together; parents and elders talked within their own groups; little direct interaction across generations."

Moments of Spontaneous Connection

Yet students also documented circumstances under which civil inattention broke down and genuine social connection emerged. Dogs frequently served as social bridges. Student 10 observed: "The dogs showed interest in each other, and the owners naturally continued the small talk." Student 3 noted children "asking owners for permission before petting dogs," creating intergenerational interaction.

Student 5 described how a soccer game facilitated cooperation among strangers: "Soccer team: cooperating with strangers during the game... Kids: asking owners for permission before petting dogs." Structured activities created opportunities for interaction that passive co-presence did not.

Shared resources occasionally prompted interaction. Student 10 documented: "Strangers formed relationships by sharing snacks and wet wipes. This was a moment when green spaces went beyond simple rest areas to show the public goods' characteristics that promote social exchange and welfare."

Student 14 observed cultural programming as a catalyst: "Lakeside cultural facilities such as the café and art gallery also attract younger populations, fostering diverse participation across age groups."

The Role of Benches

Several students identified benches as particularly important social infrastructure. Student 8 noted: "The fact that people used the benches even at night was important. It showed that the trail was not just a 'passageway' to get through, but also a 'destination' where one could stay for a while."

Student 2 observed: "Benches provided small-scale social spaces for elders, helping reduce isolation." The design and placement of seating infrastructure thus shapes social possibility.

Pedagogical Significance

Students learned to distinguish between mere co-presence and genuine social infrastructure. They recognized that welfare involves not just physical resources but social relationships—care, recognition, belonging. This insight helps students understand why some spaces feel welcoming and community-building while others, despite similar physical amenities, remain socially sterile.

Students also learned that social infrastructure can be designed: dog-friendly policies, cultural programming, activity spaces, and seating arrangements all shape whether spaces foster connection or isolation. This moves welfare analysis beyond questions of access to questions of social design.

4. Learning to See Exclusion: Safety, Alcohol, and Invisible Barriers

The most surprising pattern in student responses was their willingness to critically analyze safety concerns and problematic behaviors—issues they might normally avoid discussing to prevent criticizing Korea. By framing observations as infrastructure analysis rather than cultural critique, students felt comfortable documenting exclusionary dynamics.

Nighttime Safety and Gender

Multiple students documented how darkness and poor lighting create gendered exclusion. Student 8 compared daytime and nighttime visits: "There are dark sections between the streetlights, but people pass through them without issue... In contrast to the peaceful and open atmosphere of the daytime, the trail at night seems to have transformed into a much more personal and goal-oriented space."

Female students rarely observed past early evening. When Student 11 (male) observed at 11 PM, he documented scenes that explain why: "Three intoxicated adults walking through the park, singing and shouting loudly... Their behavior made the area feel more lively but also a bit chaotic compared to the calm atmosphere I had seen during my afternoon visit."

Students connected infrastructure deficits to exclusion. Student 15 noted: "Lack of lighting and facility management → Safety/utilization at night." Student 16 observed: "Due to the lack of benches, some sat on the lawn and relaxed," suggesting that insufficient amenities during peak times create discomfort that excludes some users.

Alcohol Consumption and Disruptive Behavior

Several students documented drinking in parks and its impact on other users. Student 11's late-night observation included "three intoxicated adults walking through the park, singing and talking loudly... The combination of festive voices and loud, disruptive behavior created a lively but somewhat chaotic atmosphere."

Student 10 observed weekend use: "Many were ordering and eating food together, while some groups were drinking beer and socializing." While not framed as problematic in this context, the observation documents alcohol as part of weekend park culture.

Student 16 noted commercial activity: "Busking and snack sales were brisk near the entrance," indicating informal economic activity that transforms the character of public space.

Rule Violations and Safety

Student 3 observed a child "climbed up the slide attached to the jungle gym in violation of the rules, raising concerns about safety and responsibility." She extended this to broader questions: "The fact that the 'right to play together with a pet' and the 'right to feel comfortable without a pet' coexist revealed that public goods are not always fully inclusive."

Student 5 documented maintenance workers cleaning but also noted: "Dog leash signs present, but some dogs seen off-leash," showing gaps between rules and enforcement.

Missing Populations

Students noticed who was absent. Multiple observations noted very few foreigners, with students explicitly wondering why. Student 8 questioned: "No foreigners—Is this due to unfamiliarity or subtle exclusion?" Student 17 observed "one foreign woman (walking)" at night and asked: "Still very few foreigners—is this due to cultural distance or lack of information?"

Several students noted the near-total absence of teenagers in spaces dominated by either children or adults. Student 18 observed primarily children and adults but few adolescents, suggesting that park design fails to meet teenage recreational needs.

Students also documented homeless individuals as present but isolated. Student 4's observation of an "unhoused person resting quietly near the riverbank, who appeared disconnected from the surrounding activities" exemplifies this pattern of exclusion-within-inclusion.

Framing Critique as Infrastructure Analysis

Students successfully critiqued these dynamics without positioning their observations as attacks on Korean culture. By focusing on infrastructure deficits (insufficient lighting, limited facilities, lack of enforcement) rather than cultural pathology, students maintained analytical distance while documenting real welfare failures.

Student 3's reflection exemplifies this approach: "This showed that while some needs are well met, other needs are overlooked or insufficiently coordinated... welfare must serve as a process of adjustment to balance these gaps." She frames exclusion as a policy problem requiring infrastructural solutions.

Pedagogical Significance

Students developed what might be called "infrastructural critique"—the ability to analyze social problems through the lens of physical environment and institutional design. This analytic stance allows critical observation without cultural essentialization.

More fundamentally, students learned that exclusion often operates through subtle mechanisms rather than explicit prohibition. Safety perceptions, temporal access, social norms, and infrastructure gaps create exclusion that is invisible in formal policy but powerfully real in lived experience. This insight is crucial for welfare analysis: understanding that good intentions and formal openness are insufficient without attention to how power, privilege, and infrastructure shape actual access.

Pedagogical Implications and Reflections

What Made This Assignment Work

Several design features contributed to the assignment's success in developing student welfare consciousness:

1. Starting with the Familiar

Students chose spaces they already used or passed regularly. This lowered barriers to participation (no special transportation needed) while making the familiar strange. As Student 19 noted: "I often passed by this playground in my daily routine, but observing it systematically allowed me to see it as more than just a familiar corner of the apartment complex." The assignment taught students to see differently rather than see new things.

2. Requiring Repeated Observation

Mandating at least two visits at different times forced students to recognize variation and contingency. Single observations might reinforce stereotypes; comparative observation revealed patterns. Nearly every student explicitly contrasted their two visits, noting differences in users, activities, and atmosphere. This taught students that welfare infrastructure functions differently depending on when and how it is accessed.

3. Providing Conceptual Tools

Public goods theory and social infrastructure concepts gave students vocabulary to analyze what they observed. Without theoretical frameworks, students might have produced purely descriptive accounts. The concepts prompted analytical questions: Is this space truly non-excludable? Non-rivalrous? Does it foster social connection?

Side Lesson 2's explicit instruction on public goods—with concrete examples distinguishing pure public goods from excludable or rivalrous resources—scaffolded student analysis. Students consistently engaged with these criteria in their reports, testing theory against observation.

4. Teaching Observational Method

Side Lesson 1's guidance on field notes improved data quality. Students learned to distinguish description from interpretation, record factual details systematically, and note their own questions and surprises. Many reports included well-structured field note summaries with clear categories (date/time, weather, users, activities, facilities, interactions), demonstrating methodological learning.

5. Scaffolding Individual and Collaborative Work

Individual observation developed personal observational capacity. Partner categorization (Module A) helped students recognize broader patterns. Role-taking exercises (Module B) built empathy for perspectives different from their own. This progression from individual → collaborative → empathetic analysis supported learning at multiple levels.

6. Requiring Evidence-Based Argumentation

The 600-1000 word analytical report required students to support claims with specific evidence from their field notes. This taught academic argumentation: making claims, providing evidence, connecting observations to concepts. Students could not simply assert that a park "promotes health"—they had to cite specific observations of elderly people exercising or families playing.

Limitations and Challenges

Several constraints shaped this assignment's implementation:

Time Pressure: Dropping Module C due to time constraints eliminated the opportunity for students to imagine alternative public goods based on international examples. This creative synthesis component would have extended student thinking beyond critique toward design imagination.

Geographic Concentration: While the assignment specified Gwangju locations, some students observed spaces in their hometowns (Naju, Gurye, Hwasun) to accommodate personal circumstances. This created slight inconsistency but also revealed that patterns observed in Gwangju held across different community contexts—temporal stratification, civil inattention, and infrastructure-based exclusion appeared in urban, suburban, and rural spaces alike.

Self-Selection Bias: Students chose their own observation sites and times, which may have influenced findings. Students might have avoided spaces or times where they felt uncomfortable, potentially underrepresenting certain forms of exclusion. The predominance of daytime and early evening observations by female students, with very few late-night observations, itself reveals gendered safety concerns.

Observation Without Intervention: Students observed but did not interview park users or officials. This limited their ability to understand motivations, experiences, or policy rationales. A future iteration might incorporate brief informal conversations to deepen understanding.

Lack of Systematic Comparison: While students observed at different times, the assignment did not require systematic variation across seasons, weather conditions, or other variables. A more rigorous design might specify observation protocols to enable controlled comparison.

Transferability to Other Contexts

This pedagogical approach can be adapted for various welfare topics and educational settings:

Other Public Goods: The same observational methodology could examine libraries, community centers, public transportation, or healthcare facilities. The core insight—that formal policy meets messy reality—transfers across welfare domains.

Comparative Analysis: Students in different cities could observe similar spaces and compare findings, revealing how local policy, culture, and infrastructure shape welfare accessibility differently.

Longitudinal Study: Students could observe the same space across an entire semester, tracking seasonal changes, policy interventions, or community responses to problems they identify.

Action Research: A more advanced version might move from observation → analysis → advocacy, having students present findings to local officials and propose infrastructure improvements.

International Contexts: While this assignment occurred in South Korea, the fundamental approach transfers to any context with public green spaces. Cultural differences in public space use would itself become a productive object of analysis.

Theoretical Contributions

Beyond pedagogical practice, student findings contribute to scholarly understanding of public goods and welfare infrastructure:

Temporal Commons: Student observations document how nominally public resources function as time-share arrangements where different groups access benefits at different times. This challenges simplistic notions of simultaneous universal access and suggests that welfare policy must attend to temporal equity, not just spatial distribution.

Infrastructure-Based Exclusion: Students identified multiple mechanisms through which exclusion operates despite formal openness: facility scarcity, safety perceptions, social norms, weather dependency, and inadequate maintenance. This extends public goods theory by showing how conditionality emerges from infrastructure design and social context rather than explicit policy.

Civil Inattention in Social Infrastructure: Student documentation of minimal cross-group interaction despite physical co-presence challenges romanticized notions of public space automatically generating community. Social infrastructure requires active design—programming, amenities, policies—that facilitate connection rather than merely enabling parallel use.

Welfare as Practice: Perhaps most importantly, students learned that welfare is not simply provided but practiced—it emerges through ongoing negotiation between policy design, infrastructure maintenance, social norms, and individual behavior. This insight moves welfare analysis beyond formal policy evaluation toward understanding how welfare actually works in daily life.

Conclusion

This green space observation assignment successfully taught undergraduate students to see mundane urban infrastructure as complex sites of welfare provision. Through repeated observation, theoretical framing, and structured reflection, students developed sophisticated understanding of how public goods function—and fail to function—in practice.

Students learned four crucial lessons. First, they discovered that theoretical categories like "public good" are useful heuristics but insufficient descriptions of reality, where conditionality and exclusion emerge from infrastructure design, social norms, and temporal patterns. Second, they recognized temporal stratification in welfare access, understanding that different groups benefit at different times rather than simultaneously. Third, they distinguished between mere co-presence and genuine social infrastructure, learning that community connection requires intentional design. Fourth, they developed capacity to identify subtle forms of exclusion, including safety concerns, infrastructure gaps, and social marginalization that operate despite formal openness.

These insights represent significant learning outcomes for welfare education. Students moved beyond abstract policy analysis to understand how welfare operates in everyday life. They learned to ask not just "Does this policy exist?" but "Who actually benefits? When? Under what conditions? Who remains excluded despite formal inclusion?"

The assignment worked because it started with students' lived experience, provided conceptual tools for analysis, required evidence-based argumentation, and scaffolded learning from individual observation through collaborative pattern recognition to empathetic role-taking. By focusing on familiar spaces and asking students to observe carefully, the assignment made visible the infrastructure that shapes daily life but usually remains unmarked.

For welfare educators, this approach offers a replicable model. Fieldwork-based assignments can develop critical consciousness while teaching research methods and theoretical concepts. The key is selecting observation sites that are simultaneously familiar (lowering participation barriers) and complex (rewarding careful analysis), then providing conceptual frameworks that help students see patterns they might otherwise miss.

Future iterations could extend this work by incorporating interviews with park users, comparing findings across cities or countries, tracking spaces longitudinally across seasons, or moving toward action research where students propose infrastructure improvements to local officials. The fundamental insight remains: welfare education should help students understand not just formal policy but lived reality, recognizing that welfare operates through practice, infrastructure, and everyday social interaction.

In an era of increasing inequality and social fragmentation, understanding how public resources distribute benefits—and how infrastructure can be designed to foster inclusion, connection, and care—is crucial democratic knowledge. This assignment taught students to see welfare not as distant policy but as the parks, benches, walking trails, and playgrounds that structure daily life. In learning to analyze green spaces, students learned to analyze welfare itself: how it is promised, practiced, and too often, unequally distributed.

References

Cho, J. (2005). Urban planning and urban sprawl in Korea. Urban Policy and Research, 23(2), 203-218.

Goffman, E. (2017). Facial engagements. In Communication Theory (pp. 137-163). Routledge.

Goffman, E. (2008). Behavior in public places. Simon and Schuster.

Klinenberg, E. (2018). Palaces for the people: How social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life. Crown.

Kolb, D. A. (2014). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. FT press.

Morrissey, J., Clavin, A., & Reilly, K. (2013). Field-based learning: The challenge of practising participatory knowledge. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 37(4), 619-627.

Oakland, W. H. (1987). Theory of public goods. In Handbook of public economics (Vol. 2, pp. 485-535). Elsevier.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university press.

Pincetl, S., & Gearin, E. (2005). The reinvention of public green space. Urban geography, 26(5), 365-384.

Appendix: Assignment Instructions

Sophomore Inquiry Project: Green Space & Welfare

Focus: Usage Patterns Study

Project Description

Public green spaces are part of a society’s welfare infrastructure. They are shared resources that support leisure, health, and community connection. This project asks you to observe how people use a green space and reflect on what this reveals about welfare policies and practices in our community.

Steps

1. Select a Site

Choose one public green space (e.g., park, riverside walkway, university lawn, rooftop garden, playground).

2. Observation Sessions

Visit your site at least twice, at different times of day or on different days of the week.
During each visit, spend at least 15–20 minutes observing quietly.

3. Track Usage Patterns

Record who is present and what they are doing.
Pay attention to different groups (children, elders, workers, students, foreigners, unhoused people, etc.).
Note how people interact with each other, the facilities, and the rules of the space.
Consider differences between your visits (weekday vs. weekend, morning vs. evening, etc.).

Side Lesson 1: How to Take Field Notes

When you observe, you need more than just “people were sitting in the park.”

Field notes are your raw data — clear, factual notes you can later analyze.

What to include in your field notes:

Date, time, and duration of your visit
Weather/conditions (sunny, rainy, noisy, quiet, crowded, empty)
Who is there (children, elders, workers, students, foreigners, unhoused people, etc.)
What they are doing (jogging, playing, resting, eating, selling, cleaning, studying)
Which facilities are used (benches, playground, shade, sports fields, bathrooms, pathways)
Interactions (Do people mix? Avoid each other? Cooperate? Ignore?)
Your quick impressions (What surprised you? What questions did you have?)

Tip: Don’t write full sentences while observing. Use short phrases, lists, or symbols. Keep it simple and fast!

4. Field Notes

Keep a simple observation log:

Time & Date of observation
Approximate number of people
Categories of users (e.g., families, joggers, couples, groups of friends, vendors, homeless individuals)
Activities (resting, exercising, socializing, working, etc.)
Facilities used (benches, playground, sports field, shade, etc.)

Side Lesson 2: What Is (and Isn’t) a Public Good?

To connect your observations to welfare ideas, you need to understand the concept of a public good.

A public good is something that is:

Non-excludable → People can’t easily be kept out
Non-rivalrous → One person’s use doesn’t reduce availability for others

Examples:

Streetlights ✅ (everyone benefits, no one gets excluded)
Clean air ✅
Toll roads ❌ (excludable, because you pay)
Library books ❌ (rivalrous, only one person can check it out at a time)
Green spaces?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no!

A park is “public” if open and free, but it can feel excludable (fenced, fees, social exclusion) or rivalrous (too crowded).

5. Connect to Welfare Concepts

In your written report (600-1000 words):

Discuss how this space functions as a public good.

Reflect on leisure and health: Who benefits most? Who seems excluded?

Consider social infrastructure: Does the space foster social interaction, care, and well-being?

Final Report Structure

Introduction: Briefly introduce your site and explain why you chose it.
Observations: Summarize what you saw across your visits, using field notes as evidence.
Analysis: Connect usage patterns to welfare concepts (public goods, leisure, social infrastructure, inclusion/exclusion).
Reflection: What does this reveal about welfare in practice in your community? Are some needs being met while others are overlooked?

Submit your work here [link to google form].

Evaluation (Suggested Criteria)

Clarity of observations (specific, detailed, accurate) – 30%
Connection to welfare concepts (public goods, leisure, social infrastructure) – 30%
Depth of reflection (critical thinking, fairness, inclusivity) – 20%
Organization & writing quality – 20%

DEADLINE SUNDAY MIDNIGHT

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