The Teacher as Touchstone and Guidepost: Facilitating Child-Directed Playtime in Head Start Preschool Classrooms

• In Event: Roundtable Session 48
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding and Facilitating Children's Play in Early Childhood Classrooms

Abstract

Child directed playtime (CDP) is one of the two components (along with playful content lessons) of a balanced playful learning (e.g. Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2009) approach to preschool curricula. Nevertheless, CDP within the classroom context has received very little research focus, and teachers receive less training and support for CDP than they do for other curricular content. Not surprisingly, the teacher practice during CDP varies widely, even within the same school and district. This study builds on previous quantitative work by providing rich descriptions of contrasting cases of child directed playtime in higher- and lower-scoring playful learning classrooms. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed.

Author

• Judy Hicks Paulick, Stanford University