Critical Review Of Documents Supporting Teaching Through Play And Active Learning

IA 1 Module 4
Critical literature reviews of documents supporting the teaching through play and active learning.
‘A positive learning climate in a school for young children is a composite of many things. It is an attitude that respects children. It is a place where children receive guidance and encouragement from the responsible adults around them. It is an environment where children can experiment and try out new ideas without fear or failure. It is an atmosphere that builds children’s self-confidence so they dare to take risks. It is an environment that nurtures a love of learning.’
~Carol B. Hillman (20th Century), U.S. early childhood educator. Creating a Learning Climate for the Early Childhood Years, Fastback Series (1989).
Problem

They offer compelling evidence that giving children stimulating playgrounds help them develop numerous skills which will aid them later on in their school careers. According to the authors, many schools in developing countries that receive international aid and funding place a greater emphasis on learning to read and write in the preprimary age group rather than play. In fact, many of these schools do not even have playgrounds. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.USA, says that this is “a profound misunderstanding of how children learn". The NGO has built playgrounds in developing countries such as Jamaica, Uganda and India. The result of this has shown that structured and stimulating play improves subsequent academic performance, develops self-regulation and self-control. Academically, giving the children time to choose how they learn to develop language, literacy and mathematical skills. It also promotes creativity and initiative which are important in helping the child with questioning and critical thinking later in their school careers. The statistics they provide are impressive such as children would have experienced guided play; 44% more graduated high school those that had not and 17% more received bachelor’s degrees than had

The important criteria being that the student is able to watch/ listen/ read the given materials repeatedly before coming to the classroom. The time in the classroom in then spent more actively where the students are able to discuss, debate or participate in project based learning amongst others.

The author of the article conducted a research study to discover whether this method of teaching would be successful in a university setting. The research concluded that most students’ experience of the flipped classroom method was very positive with most finding it a very effective technique of learning. The benefits found were:
1. Students were able to view material as often as needed before coming to class which led to the less capable to have the opportunity to be as prepared as their peers. This raised the self confidence of the students
2. Students felt more ownership of their work and were more engaged within the classroom