IMPACT OF PRETEND PLAY ON THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN CASE STUDY OF SOME SELECTED PRE-SCHOOLS IN FCT-ABUJA
Introduction
Play can be described as the essential venue in which children interact within their environment through varied situations including people and materials; play allows children to make meaning of their world. Children love to play. Play gives children many opportunities to explore the different aspects of their world, interact with others, solve their problems, work through different emotions, and practice emerging skills (Kisamore, 2018). Play is an intrinsically motivating activity that is engaging to children because it can take many forms and vary in complexity (Gibson, Fink, Torres, Browne & Mareva 2020). It has been established that in early childhood, play is the essential venue in which children interact within their environment including, situations, materials and peers — all of which add to the construction of meaning of their world. According to Rao & Gibson (2019) Pretend play is child driven, enjoyable, active, and engaging. Pretend play activities are the subset of play activities characterized by an “as-if” stance. Pretend play is an important part of child development associated with constructs of adaptive functioning such as creative thinking and positive affect. Through pretend play, children engage in social interactions with others, and these interactions support the development of skills such as self-regulation, language, and abstract thinking (Rowe, Salo & Rubin 2018; Thompson & Goldstein, 2019). Piaget and Vygotsky (cited in Lillard, 2017) have provided explanations as to why pretend play is so prominent during early childhood. On one hand, Piaget described development in stages. Within each stage children develop skills necessary to advance on to subsequent stages. Piaget explained that during the pre-o2perational stage of development, beginning around the age of three, children start to gain the skills necessary to participate in pretend play. On the other hand, Vygotsky described development as a social construct, and because of this, children learn from their social interactions with others, developing the social skills necessary to participate pretend play (Akintunde, 2019).
Participating in pretend play requires children to use many complex cognitive and social skills (Kisamore, 2018). Children who engage in pretend play are likely to be more cognitively and socially competent (Gibson, Fink, Torres, Browne & Mareva 2020; Kisamore, 2018; Thompson & Goldstein, 2019). According to Ishibashi & Uehara, (2020) play also allows children to choose activities freely, providing an engaging experience that is self-directed and self-motivated.
Research Objectives
The general purpose of this work is to examine the impact of pretend play on the cognitive development of Children in the Kindergarten settings. However, the specific objectives is to:
i. Examine the concept of Play and Pretend Play
ii. determine the relationship between pretend play and cognitive development of young children in the kindergarten;
iii. discuss the academic benefits of pretend play for kindergarten-aged children.
iv. Analyse the appropriate ways to integrate pretend play into kindergarten curriculum in order to support achievement outcomes.
Research Questions
This study intends to answer the following research questions
i. What are the impact of pretend play on the cognitive development of young children?
ii. What academic benefits does pretend play provide for kindergarten-aged children?
iii. How can kindergarten teachers integrate pretend play into the curriculum in ways that support achievement outcomes?
Chapter Two: Literature Review
This chapter will examine literature dealing with the impact of pretend play on the cognitive development of children in the kindergarten. It is divided into four sections. The first section focuses on the conceptual framework where the major variables in the study are being examined. The second section deals with the theoretical framework where relevant theories will be used to explain the research area. The third section deals with the empirical review of literature where major works on the relationship between the variables will be reviewed. The fourth section establishes the gap in the literature and the need to conduct this study
Chapter Three: Research Methodology
This chapter deals with the research methodology with references to the research design, population of the study, sample and sampling procedure, instrument of data collection, reliability and validity of instrument, procedure of administration and method of data analysis. In this study, the target population are pupils in the public kindergarten section. The sample size will be calculated using Taro Yamine formula with 95% confidence level. The formula of Taro Yamane is presented as follows
Where n = sample size,
N = population size,
e = sampling error assumed as 0.05
A self-constructed observational check-list that is reliable and validated will be used as instrument for data collection. Descriptive statistics with frequency tables will be used to analyse the demography of respondents while Pearson Regression Coefficient statistical tool in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 27 will be used to analyze the data collected.
Chapter Four: Data Analysis
This chapter will involve the analyse of data collected for the research work. The chapter will have three sections, namely demographic analysis of respondents, answers to research questions/hypotheses, and discussion of findings.
Chapter Five: Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations
The chapter five will present the summary of the entire study as well as conclusions derived from both the literature and data analysis. Recommendations will be made based on the outcome of the findings.
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REFERENCES
Akintunde, O. O. (2019). Creative Techniques for Handling Pre-Schoolers Socio-Emotional Needs in Nigeria. International Journal of Education and Evaluation, 5(1), 61–66.
Gibson, J. L., Fink, E., Torres, P. E., Browne, W. V., & Mareva, S. (2020). Making sense of social pretense: The effect of the dyad, sex, and language ability in a large observational study of children’s behaviors in a social pretend play context. Social Development, 29(2), 526–543.
Ishibashi, M., & Uehara, I. (2020). The Relationship Between Children’s Scale Error Production and Play Patterns Including Pretend Play. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(4), 1776.
Kisamore, R. (2018). Children’s Perceptions of Pretend Play Over Time [MA, West Virginia University Libraries]. https://doi.org/10.33915/etd.5986
Lillard, A. S. (2017). Why do the children (pretend) play? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(11), 826–834.
Rao, Z., & Gibson, J. (2019). The role of pretend play in supporting young children’s emotional development. The SAGE Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education, 63–79.
Rowe, M. L., Salo, V. C., & Rubin, K. (2018). Toward Creativity: Do Theatrical Experiences Improve Pretend Play and Cooperation among Preschoolers?. American Journal of Play, 10(2), 193–207.
Thompson, B. N., & Goldstein, T. R. (2019). Disentangling pretend play measurement: Defining the essential elements and developmental progression of pretense. Developmental Review, 52(2), 24–41.
