Play-based pedagogy for oral communication in early grade and preschool classrooms

Abstract

This research aimed to find out (1) what prior knowledge, skills and classroom practice teachers have and how they demonstrate their competence in implementing group play-based pedagogy; and (2) how a professional development programme assists teachers to implement play-based group pedagogy to develop oral communication skills in young learners.Setting: The study took place in the Owerri Education Zone in the eastern part of Nigeria. Methods:The researchers implemented a participatory action research (PAR) design. Nine participants were purposively selected from a cohort of teachers who taught the 5-9-year age group. Teacher participants responded to the semistructured interviews and observational schedules used as tools for data collection. The researchers used inductive thematic data analysis techniques to make sense of the data. This was performed in three phases: sorting the data and organising them in data sets, after which the analysis process commenced.Results: Findings from the study showed that although the participants had a fair understanding of play-based pedagogy, they did not know how to operationalise their understanding of play-based pedagogy directed at oral communication Conclusion:The participants gained expert knowledge of play pedagogies that require children to increase oral language use in interaction with each other, using vocabulary and phrases introduced by the teacher as scaffolding for their communication.

Developing Early Graders' Collaborative Skills through Group-Work, Play-Based Pedagogy

“…This is because collaborative skills are among the core skills of the twenty-first century; hence, teachers' pedagogical approach plays a crucial role in their realisation (Kaendler, Wiedmann, Rummel, & Spada, 2015;Ramsaroop & Petersen, 2020). Play-based pedagogy is a well-appreciated twentyfirst century teaching and learning pedagogy for early-grade learners (Ekeh, Venketsamy, Thuketana, & Joubert, 2022;Pistorova & Slutsky, 2018). Hence, early-grade teachers are encouraged to use it to facilitate collaborative learning among early-grade learners.…”