Poster #24 - Learning Through Guided Play: How Child Direction Relates to Kindergarten Learning Experiences

• In Event: Poster Session 20

Abstract

Research from the interdisciplinary science of learning field (Meltzoff et al., 2009; Sawyer, 2006) indicates that children learn best, both in terms of academic content mastery and their educational experiences when they can be active and engaged in learning that is meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful (e.g., Fisher et al., 2013; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2020, 2022; Skene et al., 2022; Whitebread, 2019; Zosh et al., 2022). These principles coalesce in the pedagogical approach of Guided Play (Weisberg et al., 2016) which aims to enhance students’ learning through intentional instruction that combines the intrinsic motivation and autonomy of play with a teacher’s guidance to achieve a learning goal (Skene et al., 2022). This paper aims to empirically test the principles underlying guided play by examining and contrasting the behaviors of children and teachers during Guided Play, Free Play, and Direct Instruction.

A snapshot coding system captured kindergarten children’s and teachers’ behaviors across the entire school day in 20 full-day public kindergarten classrooms from urban, suburban, and rural schools in a northeastern U.S. state. The observation system captured up to 20 snapshots/sweeps of every child in the classroom’s behaviors and 40 sweeps for every teacher and permitted evaluation of whether children were more likely to (1) collaborate, (2) talk, (3) ask questions, (4) use manipulatives, and (5) be involved in the activity when in guided play compared to other instructional approaches and if teachers were more likely to exhibit higher levels of (1) positive affect and (2) instructional quality (e.g., use of inferential questioning) when guided play was used.

For child-level analyses, tests of mean differences between Guided Play, Free Play, and Direct Instruction were adjusted for the repeated observation of children. For teacher effects, children’s data were aggregated to the classroom level and associations between the percentage of observation in the various instructional approaches and their behaviors were examined. As seen in Table 1, children were significantly more likely to collaborate, talk, use manipulatives, and be involved in Guided Play and Free Play compared to Direct Instruction. Moreover, children in Guided play are more likely to use ask academic questions and use manipulatives compared to Free Play. Regarding teachers, greater use of Guided Play was positively associated with a higher level of teacher positive affects (r = .54) and instructional quality (r = .38). Greater use of Direct Instruction was related to lower positive affect (r = -.32). Greater use of Free Play was unrelated to teacher affect and instructional quality.

The results demonstrate that children and teachers engage in different behaviors during Guided Play and in ways that have been previously associated with positive learning outcomes for students (e.g., Christopher & Farran, 2020; Early et al., 2007; Hoyer et al., 2021; Yannier et al., 2021). Findings suggest that in Guided Play children maintain the engagement behaviors associated with Free Play while pursuing an intentional learning goal. Implications of these findings for early childhood education practice and policy will be discussed.

Authors

• Elias Blinkoff, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Kimberly Turner Nesbitt, University of New Hampshire

• Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University