Which concepts do teachers teach through play? A study based on pre-service teachers’ observation

Abstract

This study particularly focuses on what pre-school education teachers teach through play activities in their class. Therefore, this study is rather crucial to scrutinize the type of concepts teachers utilize to enhance children’s learning in play activities. Convenient sampling was used for the data collection. The research drew its data from 120 play observation reports written by 120 pre-service pre-school education teachers taking “Development of Play in Childhood” course. Content analysis approach described by Berg (2007) was used to analyze the data. The findings show that although Ministry of National Education (MoNE) offers more than 100 concepts, teachers generally choose the same concepts such as colors, geometrical shapes, and simple antonymous concepts. They generally do not prefer to teach alternative concepts like feathery-featherless, sharp-stubby and deep-shallow through play.