EARLY CHILDHOOD PEDAGOGY AND EDUCATION: AN IN-DEPTH UNDERSTANDING OF THE PLAY-BASED LEARNING APPROACH FOR PRE-PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN

Abstract

Ensuring access to quality pre-primary education is a bed rock for improving learning and education outcomes. Pre-primary education covers children that are three years of age until the start of their primary education. During this period, the stimulation and learning that comes from play with their peers and care givers or parents at home and in quality early educational settings are very important. Play in the preschool years enables children to explore and make sense of the world around them and enables them to use and develop their imaginations and creativity. Playful experiences among preschool children exhibit key characteristics: It is actively engaging, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, joyful, symbolic, voluntary or self-chosen and adventurous and risky. Play in children creates powerful learning opportunities across all areas of development such as motor, cognitive and social, emotional and linguistic skills and this often occurs during ‘corner play’ or ‘centre time’ in the context of early learning. The barriers to integrating play into pre-primary school systems are: the lack of understanding of the value of play as a foundation for academic concepts, the perceived misconceptions of parents and caregivers about play, the adoption of an educational curriculum and early learning standards that do not address play, etc. Therefore, to integrate play-based activities as a useful means of enhancing teaching and learning outcomes in preschool systems the following recommendations are proffered: learning through play for children should involve the use of stimulating materials, there should be adequate training for teachers and early childhood educators, there should be collaborations with families and communities in the context of pre-primary programmes as well as adequate monitoring, regulation and quality assurance.