Agentic Playful Teachers: The Playful Mindset of Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

Play and playfulness are understood as basic and vital elements of early childhood education (ECE), and together with playful pedagogies, they perform a central role in Finnish ECE. In multidisciplinary research, children’s learning is generally understood through the inquiring process of play. However, playfulness, as opposed to play, has received relatively little scholarly attention, and educators’ use of playfulness has received even less (Pinchover, 2017). Playfulness is a vital part of life for both adults and children. At the same time, teachers’ behavior can influence the playfulness of a child; moreover, teachers’ own playfulness is critical for establishing warm and secure relationships with children. As such, the aim of this research was to explore pre-service teachers’ (PsTs’) understanding of agentic playfulness, particularly in the ECE context. Study participants included 159 PsTs; study data were gathered from PsTs’ written reflections regarding the use of playfulness in their future work. The results of qualitative analyses showed that the PsTs’ agentic playfulness mirrored a relational and tensious space consisting of three domains: teacher?25 initiated agentic playfulness, child-centered agentic playfulness, and community shared agentic playfulness. Each domain revealed dimensions of the nature of PsTs’ mindset and the orientation of their agentic playfulness. The results are discussed in relation to pedagogization of play, relational pedagogy community of learnes, and teacher education supporting and developing future ECE teachers’ agentic playfulness.

Adult Playfulness: Finnish Teachers Evaluating Their Own Playfulness

“…As pedagogical experts, playful teachers are adaptive, which in practice means that they are flexible and open to new experiences and not stuck in existing practices and routines. Their pedagogical choices and actions are student-centred instead of teacher-centred or teacher-initiated (Melasalmi et al, 2022), and they trust students and value their opinions. In addition, they are highly engaged in pedagogical and playful learning processes, which leads to students enjoying classes and being satisfied (Kangas et al, 2017).…”

“…Hyvönen, 2008;Kangas, 2010a, b;Kangas et al, 2017;Singer, 2015), the potentials of play and playfulness have also been acknowledged in higher education (Siklander & Harmoinen, 2021;Whitton, 2018;Whitton & Moseley, 2019) and in working life 4 (Bateson & Martin, 2013). Recent studies in early childhood teacher education (ECE) contexts have analysed future ECE teachers' playfulness (Hurme et al, 2022) and playful agency (Melasalmi et al, 2022), which highlight the importance of integrating theoretical and practical learning in education more thoroughly than the current case.…”

Pre-service early childhood teachers’ perceptions of their playfulness

“…In a recent study, pre-service teachers emphasized their role as ECE teachers and suggested ways to implement playfulness in ECE teachers' work. The majority of their suggestions were based on teacher-initiated activities, while they were aware of their responsibilities and also concerned about having control over the child groups (Melasalmi et al, 2022). Shin (2022) examined pre-service ECE teachers' perceptions of playful learning, and their reflective reports were analysed qualitatively.…”