Abstract

Play serves an important process for promoting children’s learning and development besides enhancing emotional, intellectual, and social skills of child in ways that cannot be taught through formal classroom instruction. When children play, teachers’ involvement has been a controversial issue since there are both advantages and disadvantages of their involvement. While teacher participation enriches children’s play and develops children’s intellectual and social skills, if teachers give more structured cognitive activities through play and take over the control, at that time teacher intervention disrupt children’s play. Therefore, this qualitative inquiry seeks to obtain a more in-depth understanding of when and how a preschool teacher involves to students play and demonstrates or shows personal practices involving effective participation. As it is supported through the literature review and as the findings of this case study show that teachers should be a model and a demonstrator instead of intervening the play by direct instruction.

Key words: Play, education, child development; socialization; teacher involvement