Play opportunities in Colombian preschool classrooms

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

The importance of play for children's learning and development has been emphasized from different perspectives and theories. More recently, authors have argued that play should be conceptualized as a spectrum of practices to recognize its changing nature and that different types of play are linked to specific domains of children’s development (Jensen et al., 2019; Danniels y Pyle, 2018; Zosh et al., 2018). For instance, free play is related to socioemotional development while games (with specific rules and limited child choice) contributes to cognitive development. Guided play, which offers a balance between children's choice and structure, has been linked to the development of math and language. As a consequence, it has been argued that children should learn through a combination of play practices. Most of the research on play opportunities come from high-income countries (Jensen, et a. 2019; Pyle & Bigelow, 2015; Walsh & Fallon, 2019). Play is at the center of the early childhood education policy in Colombia. Despite this emphasis, no systematic research has been conducted in early childhood classrooms to understand how play is being used and incorporated to teacher’s practices. To our knowledge, this study is the first systematic exploration the type of play opportunities within the in low- and middle-income countries.

The first contribution of this study is methodological. We developed a procedure to document play opportunities using the framework of the spectrum of playful practices (Jensen et al., 2019). Through video codification using Nvivo, we identified the activities that take place throughout 4-hours of classroom observation. Then, we selected the video segments that meet the criteria for playful opportunities and coded its main features: who initiates, who directs, how children transition, the modality of interaction, the content, and the resources used. Finally, we considered whether teacher’s interactions were aimed at facilitate play (being supportive, attune, relate, and discipline gently). The sample was composed of 12 public classrooms with children between the age of 3 and 4 years, evenly distributed in two cities in Colombia.

Preliminary results indicate that time dedicated to play was less than 29% of the observation period. We identified nine play opportunities (all games and free play). In eight of these opportunities, play was initiated by the teacher. Even though games were more frequent than free play, the overall time length was shorter (games time average: 14 minutes, free play time average: 25 minutes). Teacher's involvement during free play consisted in asking questions (mostly close-ended) and supporting children during play. Most teacher's comments were related with discipline and behavior management. During games, mostly invited children to get involved in traditional and local games, enforcing and promoting adherence to the rules. By the time of the SRCD meeting, an in-depth qualitative analysis of the discourse of teachers when promoting playful opportunities will be presented. Specifically, how do they introduce play and the contents and purpose of playful opportunities will be analyzed. The contributions of this research for global efforts to measure and promote learning through play will be discussed.

Authors

• Juliana Sanchez, Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes)
  Presenting Author

• Carolina Maldonado-Carreño, Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes)
  Non-Presenting Author