Play or Learn: Refocusing early childhood teacher education curriculum for preparing teachers for play

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Knowledge, training, and practice of early childhood teachers

Proposal

Learning through playing in early childhood education ensures sustainable learning for a sustainable world. Through play, children exercise their agency, voice, values and learn how to learn. The self-organized knowledge is more likely to be useful and applicable in life since it was gained through active sense-making processes. However, the growing demand for teacher accountability and measurable outcomes force teachers to follow the traditional school curriculum and focus on academics and high-stakes test preparation (Lynch, 2015; Sisson & Kroeger, 2017; Souto-Manning, S., 2017). Thus, the challenge for early childhood teacher educators today is how to prepare preservice teachers for the education field, where “child-initiated play-based curriculum, standards-based curriculum, and accountability issues frequently collide” (Jung & Jin, 2014, p. 358).

This study was conducted at one of the Midwestern universities’ early childhood undergraduate education program in the United States. Within the program, 241 students at different stages, Cohort I (second semester, sophomore year) through Cohort V (second-semester senior year), participated in the quantitative phase of the study. The results of the quantitative data were used to select the ten participants for the qualitative portion, two from each cohort, one demonstrating the most positive attitude towards play and the other the least (within the respective cohort). The participant body is homogenous, consisting approximately of 96% females with the average age of 21.
The preliminary quantitative results indicated that from sophomore through the first semester of junior years, the future teachers hold relatively positive perceptions of play in early childhood education. However, from the second semester of junior year, these perceptions begin to follow a different pattern. Although all participants generally perceived play in early childhood classrooms as important, these students possessed more narrow and rigid perceptions in relation to activities and adjectives that constitute play and the role of play in learning and curriculum. Overall, across the stages, play was viewed as physical and social activity and less cognitive.

The interview data, however, indicated no difference between Cohort I through Cohort V preservice teacher’s perceptions on play. All participants strongly believed in the importance of play in early childhood classrooms. These beliefs are a combination of their early childhood play experiences, parents’ influence, and college education; thus, their definition of play varies. It was found that the students in the advanced stages of the program become aware of the challenges in incorporating play in practice. Moreover, the preliminary analysis of mixed method results demonstrated that for all students, regardless of their stage in the program, a clear link between play and learning is still not well established.

Therefore, it is suggested that to address the issue of play to counter the academization in early childhood classrooms, teacher education programs should re-direct their focus from teaching “play” to teaching “learning”. The clear understanding of how young children learn and develop cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically, will hopefully allow preservice teachers to re-construct their deeply-seated, unchangeable preconceived notions of play on their own. Limitations and implications of the study will be discussed.

Author

• Ilfa Zhulamanova, Kent State University