Boneka sebagai alat pedagogi dapat membantu perkembangan kanak-kanak dari segi sosial dan emosi. Penyelidikan ini dilaksanakan untuk mengenal pasti persepsi guru terhadap penggunaan boneka dalam perkembangan sosial dan emosi kanak-kanak di prasekolah. Sampel kajian terdiri daripada 100 guru prasekolah dari Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (KPM) dan swasta di sekitar Seremban, Kuala Lumpur dan Selangor. Data-data penyelidikan diperoleh melalui soal selidik dan diproses menggunakan Independent Samples T-test dan ANOVA Satu Hala. Keputusan penyelidikan telah mencapai hipotesis penyelidikan iaitu tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan antara persepsi guru prasekolah terhadap penggunaan boneka sebagai alat bantu mengajar dalam perkembangan sosial dan emosi kanak-kanak berdasarkan status prasekolah dan tempoh mengajar guru di prasekolah. Ini menunjukkan guru prasekolah mempunyai persepsi yang positif terhadap penggunaan boneka dalam perkembangan sosial dan emosi kanak-kanak.

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between educators' understanding of role play activities for preschooler's language, social, and emotion development. This study employs a quantitative method design and the population of the study is 352 educators who teach preschoolers aged from five to six years old in kindergartens in Chaozhou, China. The sample was chosen through stratified random sampling and the instruments of this study are Role Play Activity and Preschooler's Development Rating Scale. The findings revealed a positive relationship between educators' understanding of role play activities and applying role play activities for preschoolers' language, social, and emotion development. The findings also show that, while educators recognize role play activities are beneficial to early childhood development, the level of use is still low. To facilitate preschoolers' development, the following educational suggestions are put forward at the end of the study: in practical teaching activities, kindergarten educators should focus on optimizing role play activities teaching methods, establishing performance cognition, and allowing children to exercise language skills fully in activities. Educators should focus on optimizing the teaching methods of role play activities, establishing behavioral cognition, and allowing preschoolers to exercise language skills. Educators should use various game materials to cultivate preschoolers' social behaviors with their peers, intervene subtly in preschool children's games, and promote their social development. Qualitative research and interview data are recommended in future research, adding more dimensions for a deeper understanding of the research and more accurate data.

This study investigated Malaysian preschool teachers’ self-efficacy and attitudes toward the use of the English language as a medium of instruction (EMI) and proposed a model of how different variables were related to their use of English in the classrooms. In order to obtain a broad picture of the nature and scope of preschool teachers’ use of EMI, a survey study was undertaken. The research instrument was a questionnaire that was distributed to randomly-selected preschool teachers throughout Malaysia. The process of modeling was based on the empirical data and a theoretical model that was constructed on the basis of the two theoretical aspects, that is self-efficacy and attitudes-behavior relation. The theoretical model served as a bridge between the abstractions from theory and the development of the model. The model suggested that strong self-efficacy influenced preschool teachers’ use of English to teach. In addition, the model also indicated that those preschool teachers with positive attitudes also felt self-efficacious in using English to teach and negative attitudes had the opposite effect. Those preschool teachers who had a positive attitude that teaching using English would be useful for the children perceived that they had greater ability toward handling classroom management issues. In addition, they believed too, that they were confident to use appropriate assessment tasks in the classroom when English was used as the medium of instruction. It would appear that self-efficacy and attitudes were mutually related to preschool teachers’ use of English to teach.

A systematic review of literature regarding the factors that hinders or challenges preschool teachers’ use of the English language in formal preschool classrooms was undertaken initially in order to summarize the findings of research between 1991 and 2016. Research suggested that various important teacher and context level barriers were barriers. Large number of literature reported preschools teachers’ lack of confidence in using the language as the prevalent barrier, followed by lower than expected proficiency level. The literature alluded to an association between these two teacher barriers. Other teacher context included inability to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all learners when English was solely used, deficient attitudes and beliefs about the importance of the language thus creating an inherent resistance to use the language in the classroom, and stress related workplace due to overzealous administrators. Context level barriers included time constraints, classroom environment (example, lack of access to resources, large classroom sizes, and lack of parental encouragement towards the use of English), and lack of administrative support.