SUPPORTING FRAMEWORKS AND STRUCTURAL-LOGICAL MODELS AS A LEVER FOR UNDERSTANDING THE RECREATIONAL-TOURIST CONSTRUCT

Abstract

Turning to models as «sterile situations» and modeling means a transition to new levels of knowledge of public reality and the natural environment. The model as an anchor connects the subject and the object, and the efforts to create it activates cognitive activity, spreads effective methods of experimental research to littlestudied areas. In geography, modeling has gone through a number of stages, during which the ratio between visual and abstract, natural and mathematical, non-formalized and formalized methods of reproducing reality has changed. In recreational geography, as in other scientific and practical directions and sciences, verbal, mathematical, computer, graphic models are used; of the latter, 5 groups of models were considered in terms of demonstration, use, specifics and discussion; graphic modeling is not only an essential factor in achieving the research goal, but also a lever for the formation of search skills on the part of both the student and the teacher; the subject-object essence of modeling can be point, linear, planar multi-level constructs ‒ from local and regional to (sub)continental and planetary. The illustrative component of the article is an insignificant part of our own developments, which are based on many years of experience in the application of field, expeditionary and cameral methods, the use of numerous information sources, a number of classical research methods and computer technologies. Examples of 5 groups of models are offered (supporting resource-recreational frameworks, monitoring evaluation models, models of spatial distribution and hierarchy, models of territorial recreation systems, cartographic models), which are important both in the pedagogical process in institutions of higher education, instilling the skills of constant search and deepening the methodological arsenal of the acquirer, and in scientific activity, acting as an important lever of the cognitive process.