Teacher’s implementation of construction play in early childhood learning environments

Abstract

Historically, the concept of play has been at the centre of early childhood programmes. Early childhood educators have observed and emphasised that young children bring energy and enthusiasm to their play, which seem to drive development and form an inseparable part of a child’s development. This study determined how construction play occurs in different preschools and learning environments - looking at indoor and outdoor learning environments. I focused on six preschools in different socio-economic settings, in the Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa. I looked at how regularly construction play occurs, what form of construction play the children engage in, what the learning environment looks like, and whether the teachers have enough knowledge, understanding and practical application. I also investigated if teachers know and understand how to implement construction play and if they know how to use this form of play in different learning environments. In conclusion, I investigated whether construction play is beneficial and how teachers can better implement this form of play in different learning environments. For my data generation, I used semi-structured interviews, structured narratives, observations and photo voice to gather data related to preschool teachers' perspectives on the importance of exposing young children to construction play and whether they are mindful of the benefits of construction play, such as for cognitive and problem-solving skill development. The process I used to document this information was: voice recordings of the interviews, which were transcribed for data analysis purposes; structured narratives, which are the teachers' stories about construction play written with given guidelines, visual representations of the learning environment, children engaging in construction play and the teachers engaging with the children and classroom observations. The findings are thoroughly explained in Chapter 5, where the findings show that this form of play develops the young child in a holistic way. The literature and research findings agree that the teachers’ background plays a role in their implementation of this form of play. There is further agreement between the literature and research findings that it can be beneficial to pair construction materials with other resources and toys. Construction play is a well-loved form of play with an abundance of developmental properties and aspects.