Harnessing Technology to Support Play-Based Learning: Design and Feasibility of an Online Teacher Professional Development Course

• In Event: Professional development for learners in uncertain and changing social/global environments

Proposal

Background/Problem
In Tanzania, there is a critical need to improve the quality of pre-primary education to ensure children enter primary school with strong social-emotional skills and a foundation of early literacy and numeracy skills. The government has sought to improve pre-primary quality through the use of participatory pedagogical approaches, including play-based learning. Tanzania’s education policy states in the pre-primary curriculum document: “The teacher is required to use methods that will encourage children’s participation in performing different activities. Since play is the child’s main activity, teachers are encouraged to use play to facilitate teaching and learning” (MoEST, 2016: p.12). This reflects a global focus on promoting learning through play in early childhood education (ECE), based on research showing that play-based learning optimally supports pre-primary children’s learning and development across social, physical, and cognitive domains (e.g. Weisberg, Hirsch-Pasek, and Golinkoff, 2013; Zosh et al., 2017).

Although policy requires the use of “play as a method for teaching and learning” at the pre-primary level, few teachers employ participatory approaches like play-based learning, relying instead on memorization, repetition, and copying. The policy-practice gap is driven by a range of factors, including failure to incorporate principles and practices of play-based learning systematically and effectively into pre- and in-service pre-primary teacher development. Additionally, most teachers in Tanzania may have limited knowledge about play-based learning and lack opportunities to observe or experience it in practice.

To address this need to increase pre-primary teachers’ knowledge and skills to use play-based methods, we developed Project PLAY: Professional Learning About plaY, an app-based online professional development course about play-based learning for teachers and teacher educators in low-resource contexts. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the Project PLAY app, discuss our design-based approach, share findings from two pilot phases, and solicit audience feedback on our approach.

Intervention
We are a cross-national team of faculty and doctoral students from the U.S. and Tanzania that has collaborated on education development projects in Tanzania for 7 years. We identified a need to increase Tanzanian teacher educators’ understanding of play-based pedagogies just before COVID-19 began. COVID-related international travel restrictions that us to develop an online course rather than an in-person workshop, a pivot we see as an opportunity to learn about the benefits and drawbacks of using technology to bring teacher development to scale.

The Project PLAY app consists of six modules, beginning with an introduction to play as an active learning strategy and the relationship between play and learning. The course is tailored to the Tanzanian context, with a module that discusses the relevance of play-based learning in Tanzania. Three content-area modules (Play & Literacy, Play & Mathematics, Play & Science) demonstrate how play-based pedagogies can be employed to meet specific standards in the Tanzanian pre-primary curriculum. Throughout the modules, participants gain firsthand experience with play-based approaches by viewing contextually-relevant videos and through “play invitations,” opportunities to engage in play experiences and share their reflections with other participants in an online professional community. For example, a prompt in Module 1 asks participants to gather 5-10 objects in their home that can be stacked and then try three times to make the tallest tower they can. After doing this, participants are asked to share photos and a reflection on the activity with a Facebook group. We expect embodied experiences with play, such as this “tallest tower” activity, to increase the enjoyability of the app, to help deepen participants' understanding of play-based learning, and to provide participants with concrete play-based learning ideas they could replicate and use in their classrooms.

Design-based Approach
We are developing the Project PLAY app through a collaborative Design Research process (McRobert, 2018). Our work began with developing content for the six modules, supported by an advisory board of Tanzanian ECE experts. We then engaged with a full-stack developer and a UX expert to develop the application itself. At the time of writing, we have entered into a pilot phase with a small group of Tanzanian teacher educators, who will complete the first two modules on the app and share their feedback. This feedback will be used to inform further content and design changes to the app. We will conduct a second pilot study of the full course with a larger group of participants later this fall. Findings from these pilot studies will be shared in our presentation.

Guiding Principles
Our work is guided by the principles of collaboration, feasibility, and contextual relevance. Our team is committed to a design-based, iterative approach to developing and rolling out the app, which is why we expect the app to continue to evolve and change based on feedback from multiple pilot phases. Aware of the limitations of online learning in a low-resource context, we built the app with factors like low bandwidth and unstable internet connectivity in mind. We also focus on introducing play-based pedagogy in a way that demonstrates its feasibility in the Tanzanian context, using photos and videos that highlight low- or no-cost and contextually-relevant examples of play-based learning. Finally, our course is aligned with the national pre-primary curriculum because we know teachers are required to strictly adhere to the national syllabus. Our goal is to support participants’ ability to provide children with opportunities to engage in play-based learning opportunities that directly support national curriculum goals.

Impact
Our goal in developing this app is to provide an open-access, contextually relevant course for teachers and teacher educators in low-resource contexts who wish to learn more about play-based learning and who seek guidance for implementing play-based pedagogies in their classrooms. We imagine future iterations of the app can be adapted for different and international contexts and audiences, and that there will also be versions of the app that include online coaching and interaction with play-based learning experts. It is our hope that Project PLAY will contribute to current efforts to translate play-based learning policy into practice in contexts like Tanzania and to innovations in teacher preparation and development.

Authors

• Bethany Wilinski, Michigan State University

• Amit Sharma, Michigan State University