Teacher Perception of Play: In Leaving No Child Behind Are Teachers Leaving Childhood Behind?

The value of play seems inherent to the understandings of early childhood, but teachers of young children in the elementary grades have rarely been studied as to their attitudes toward play (Wing, 1995 Wing, L. A. 1995. Play is not the work of the child: Young children's perceptions of work and play.. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 10: 223–247. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The research explored teacher perceptions of the role of play in learning and the implications for practice. The study involved 4 first-grade teachers from 2 diverse socioeconomic school settings. The pheno-menological work followed a qualitative format of interview with an analysis of related documents. Although the instructors held a common value for play in the development of young learners, they did not make a corresponding provisions for such in their classrooms with the exception of 1 participant. Varying perceptions of the definition and place of play resulted in differing levels of willingness to include child-initiated play that were spawned within the educational contexts. These perceptions led to the inductively realized outcome variables of instructional goals, student products, and classroom climate. Dewey's (1916) Dewey, J. 1916/2004. Democracy and education., Kila, MT: Kessinger Publishing.. [Google Scholar] view of work and play, Bredekamp and Rosegrant's (1995) Bredekamp, S. and Rosegrant, T. 1995. “Reaching potentials through transforming curriculum, assessment, and teaching.”. In Reaching potentials: transforming early childhood curriculum and assessment, Edited by: Bredekamp, S. and Rosegrant, T. 15–21. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Vol. 2 [Google Scholar] Continuum of Teacher Behaviors, and Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) Ajzen, I. and Fishbein, M. 1980. Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. [Google Scholar] theory of reasoned action provided frameworks for deductively understanding the teachers' instructional decisions.