Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Education (MEd)

First Supervisor/Advisor

Winston Edward Massam

Second Supervisor/Advisor

Nipael Mrutu

Department

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

Abstract

Whilst play has been initiated by various philosophers and psychologists in early childhood education, the researcher sought to investigate the role of play in children’s socio-emotional and cognitive development in selected public pre-primary schools in Temeke Municipality and found out that teachers encourage a different kind of play to stimulate children’s development. This was a qualitative research approach whereby the researcher employed a case study design to get in-depth details from participants’ insights, expressions, and feelings based on their natural setting concerning the role of play in children’s development, and multiple ways of data collection were considered. The findings from interview transcription, observation schedule, and document analysis protocol were analyzed and discussed. The study discovered that traditional play such as rede, ukutiukuti, football by using an empty bottle as a ball, mdako, running, jumping, singing, poetry, role play, symbolic play, and age-appropriate play was highly initiated in selected public pre-primary schools. It was through these play children acquired skills like collaboration, enjoyment, happiness, unity, cooperation, autonomy, respect, motivation, trust, socialization, communication, teamworking, love, sharing, care, empathy, generosity, creativity, thinking, comprehension, language development, intellectual, problem-solving, remembering, and reasoning which aids them in learning. Furthermore, the study has analyzed that teachers’ perception toward play in children’s development is acknowledged positively, thus teachers perceive that when children play they develop physically and gain health, as well children engage in play for fun. However, findings show that public pre-primary school prefers low-cost no cost resources for play, thus they use resources from the local context and the classroom is considered multiple age which stimulates peer learning. Though teachers were interested in practicing various play, unfortunately, they found some barriers which hence them not to apply some play activities. Among the barriers were the shortage of play resources, absence of learning corners, shortage of space to play, shortage of ECCE experts, and parental involvement. Therefore, the researcher suggest that MoEST should ensure that teacher’s recruitment for the pre-primary school has the necessary skills to design and impose various play that enables learners to engage in nurturing children's competence. Nevertheless, future research should focus on investigating the wide community like three or more districts on the role of play in children’s socio-emotional and cognitive development and should be a comparative study for the better implication of the study findings.

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