Opportunities and Challenges in Integrating Traditional Chinese Culture into Preschool Drama: Teachers’ Perspectives

With the growing emphasis on cultural identity construction in early childhood education, integrating traditional Chinese culture (TCC) into preschool drama has gradually become an important teaching strategy for preschool teachers. However, existing research lacks a structured theoretical analysis of the opportunities and challenges from the teachers' perspective.This study adopts Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a framework and employs qualitative methods to conduct semi-structured interviews with 25 preschool teachers, followed by thematic analysis to extract core propositions. The results reveal that in the Autonomy dimension, teachers perceive Curricular Flexibility as an opportunity in cultural expression, while facing Understanding limitations as a challenge;in the Competence dimension, teachers experienced Pedagogical Growth as an opportunity but also faced the challenge of Competence Gap; in the Relatedness dimension, Affective Resonance served as an opportunity but also led to the challenge of Cultural Disconnection. This study demonstrates that opportunities and challenges exhibit a symmetrical relationship across the three dimensions of SDT, revealing a coexisting structure of motivational fulfillment and frustration among teachers.This study constructs a teaching motivation and challenge symmetry model based on the three dimensions of SDT, revealing the interactive mechanism of teacher motivation fulfillment and frustration in cultural drama teaching. The model expands the theoretical understanding of the influence of cultural teaching on teachers' psychological needs and provides empirical support for motivation research in early childhood education. The study also proposes intervention paths for three-dimensional motivation restoration, strengthening the sustainability and agency of cultural drama teaching.