Qi Wen's Reflection

An individual reflection of the topic selection process

Initial TOpic

Our initial topic chosen was on play-based curriculums in preschool.
Play-based is a curriculum that consists of activities and learning approaches that is based on the children's play experiences. In this curriculum, children are provided with a wide variety of play opportunities while the teacher's role is to facilitate, draw out and extend on what they can learn through the play episode.

Why choose Play-Based?

Initially, I was keen on the topic of play-based curriculum for our project as I was recently exposed to it during my education trip to Taiwan. There, I visited many childcare centres that believed in the play-based curriculum. It was an eye-opening experience to witness their children in action.

During my course of study, I have developed my teaching philosophy that:

"every child is capable of being an independent and competent learner. Since they learn best in an environment that provides ample opportunity for exploration and interaction, it is the teachers' role to provide them with a safe environment where they are not afraid to make mistakes."

Therefore, the play-based curriculum is one of the learning approaches that I believe that is best for the children.

With my strong interest towards understanding more about the feasibility of play-based curriculum in Singapore preschools. I hoped that through this topic, I would be able to analyze my chances of working in a play-based environment in Singapore as a future educator.

chosen TOpic

Our final topic chosen was on learning through play in classrooms. However, the needs analysis will be focusing on improving purposeful play within the centre.
Purposeful play is a learning approach that usually stems from learning objectives derived from the education framework provided. This approach involved the teachers' planning of play activities that are based on the children's needs and abilities in order to create engaging and meaningful learning opportunities for the children.

Why choose learning through play?

After a consultation with our module advisor, I understood that "play-based" as a topic may not be culturally appropriate. This is because even though preschools in Singapore are implementing play, the government has introduced "purposeful play" as the form of play to be standardized throughout all preschools to ensure the quality of education. As our project aims to improve on a current issue of Singapore preschools, choosing the topic of "purposeful play" would be a much more suitable topic as compared to introduced an entirely new concept of "play-based curriculum" to the center.

While taking our tutors' advice into consideration, we also factored our burning interest towards a play-based curriculum. Therefore, we decided to expand the topic to "learning through play", which covers the many forms of play in learning instead of merely focusing on "purposeful play". With that, our scope not only addresses our interests and curiosity, but it is also culturally appropriate.

Overall

Due to cultural considerations, instead of focusing on play-based curriculum, we decided to broaden our topic to address learning through play in general. In fact, I feel that I would not have an equally meaningful experience completing the project if I were to merely focus on play-based. With the chosen topic, not only was my group able to improve the needs of implementing purposeful needs in our chosen centre, but was also able to extend to transitioning the centre to support a play-based learning approach.

With that, I have learned the importance of 'taking a step back to view the bigger picture'. Without catering to the needs faced by the centre when implementing purposeful play, the feasibility of employing a play-based learning approach would be near impossible. "You can't run if you never learn how to walk." Hence, to reach our end goal (play-based), we need to first take baby steps.