Play and Learning in Children’s Eyes (PALICE): Developing contextually relevant tools to support teachers’ Learning through Play practices

• In Event: Understanding children’s and teachers’ perspectives of learning through play: Findings from Rapid Ethnographic Studies in Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda

Proposal

LEGO PALICE is a set of formative tools designed to help teachers in low-and middle-income countries assess and improve their practice in Learning through Play (LtP), through a deeper understanding of how children experience LtP in their classrooms. The tools will consist of two modalities: the Formative Observation and Reflection Assessment (FORA), intended for use by teachers as they practice LtP, and the Children’s Experiences of LtP Protocol (CELP), intended for use by a coach or resource support staff, by soliciting direct insights from children about their LtP experiences. PALICE is implemented through a phased approach to develop, contextualize, test and refine the FORA and the CELP across three diverse low-and middle-income countries: Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda.

Experiences of play are highly socially and culturally mediated, and a strong ethnographic approach is necessary to understand these nuances. Taking an anthropological lens, PALICE is trying to capture children’s and teachers’ experiences and perspectives of LtP experiences and behaviors in Bangladesh, Colombia, and Uganda through a Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REA). The REA will support our conceptualization of play from non-western locations by gathering an in-depth understanding of how children and educators are thinking about play and their experiences of play to inform our Learning through Play Framework (LEF) and the design of the FORA and the CELP (as well as how these two modalities connect with each other). Additionally, the REA will identify alignments and misalignments between teachers’ and students’ understandings and conceptualizations of LtP. The alignments and misalignments affect the design of the CELP and of the FORA, i.e., what data we should be collecting through each modality and how we connect them. Our current design assumes that CELP is a triangulation to the FORA. Through the REA we will examine if the triangulation between children and teachers’ perspectives of a LtP activity is a valid triangulation to make.

Findings from the REA will inform the design and administration protocol of the FORA and the CELP. The REA will provide the foundation for tool development, ensuring that the FORA and the CELP are not designed in a vacuum, but are rooted in teaching LtP practices and directly relevant to their instruction. This presentation will highlight PALICE’s phased approach to develop, contextualize, test and refine the FORA and the CELP across three diverse low-and middle-income countries: Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda.

Authors

• Carina Omoeva, FHI 360

• Fernanda Soares, FHI360

• Nikhit D'Sa, University of Notre Dame

• Jennifer Zosh, Penn State University, Brandywine

• Brian P Dooley, FHI 360