Learning Activities in Preschool Classrooms: Preferences of Preschool Teachers and Views of Parents

Abstract

Early childhood teachers and their preferences are very important in order to apply a balanced curriculum in the early childhood education classroom. On the other hand, the views of parents play an important role in classroom implementations; although their views can sometimes create barriers for teachers, and sometimes teachers can be inspired by them. As a result, both teachers' preferences and parents' views need to be investigated in order to understand how they affect learning activities in early childhood education classrooms. With this purpose, this study aims to investigate preschool teachers' preferences and parents' views of learning activities applied in preschool classrooms through a case study. The study included 25 preschool teachers and 33 preschool children's parents. Data collection took the form of semi-structured interviews held with the preschool teachers and the parents of preschool children. The results of the study revealed that the preschool teachers mostly preferred art, mathematics, and literacy activities, whilst science, drama, and body movement activities were the least implemented types of activities in the early childhood classroom. On the other hand, language, literacy and body movement activities were considered most important activities by parents. Moreover, the needs of the children, products, and processes were the first three reasons behind the teachers' classroom activity preferences, whilst the teachers' self-confidence in applying the activities was the least influential factor in their activity preferences.