Extending the Margin of Play through Internalization
As ‘play’ is crucial for children’s development, this cluster project aims to extend our understanding of children’s play from different perspectives so as to improve the quality of play practice in local ECE settings.
Extend to Global Dialogues/ Conversations
We organized three online seminars to facilitate international dialogues and conversations about play. “Play in Difficult Circumstance” discussed on how ECE practitioners help expanding children’s play opportunities in difficult times such as lockdown during the pandemic. “Play and Technology” examined on how technology can be effectively used to facilitate children’s play and development; and “Play in the Future” focused on how adults can maintain high-quality play time for children in the future. We highlight that children should dominate the direction of play and adults should take up the role of play facilitators instead of manipulators.
Extend to Local Understanding of Play
We conducted surveys, interviews, and on-site observations to understand Hong Kong teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward play. Teachers held highly positive views on the benefits of play for children and nearly all participating kindergartens offered no less than 30 minutes free play every day. Teachers also used the concept of PlayWork and apply child-centred philosophy to maximize the opportunities for children to play creatively and freely.
Extend to Local Community
We Knowledge exchanges with the local community are also one of our efforts. We advocate Doris Bergen’s theory on the play. We have also developed a professional development program on rebuilding children’s power of play in which student teachers will get be supported to exchange ideas with play workers, play therapists and parents’ play experts.
Project Start Year: 2022, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin
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Extending the Margin of Play
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Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮, LAM, Pui Ching Jessie 林沛晴, FUNG SZE WUN, SERENA 馮詩韻
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Preliminary Study on the Impact of Free-play on Young Children
Hong Kong Educational Bureau has been promoting free play implementation on their kindergarten curriculum guide but seems that more questions arise from teachers and early childhood education practitioners regarding its nature and implementation. This project aims to seek the impact of implementing free play by adopting Playwork framework. Specifically, we will seek its impact on a child’s playfulness and socio-emotional development in kindergarten students. We will collect data from three local schools that have been through SEED training by Playright Hong Kong, which uses the Playwork framework in their free play training. From each school, classroom teachers will be asked to randomly select two students (1:1 gender ration) to be observed, four times throughout the year. The mixed-method will be used in this research. The Test of Playfulness will be used to assess children’s playful characteristic through a structured observation by the research team. Socio-emotional development will be assessed . Teacher and observed kindergarten students will also be interviewed to gain more insights regarding these constructs.
Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮
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Bring Humanity to Education through Experiential Learning
This project aims at encouraging students to cherish humanistic values and developing virtue ethics through reflective practice in experimental learning opportunities.
Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮
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Study on Seed School Program (SSTP) in Promoting Free Play in Hong Kong Kindergartens
The present study aims to conduct a comprehensive study on inquiring the factors motivating teachers to integrate free play into their own pedagogy in class. Correspondingly, teachers’ experiences of participating in free play and changes in beliefs of children will be spotlighted.
Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮
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Visible Reflections
Visual Thinking is an art-based instructional approach to provide opportunities for students to visualize their thinking, thinking out loud and exchange their ideas in a positive learning environment. Students develop images facilitated by flexible thinking routines. Gibbs’ reflective cycle will be applied as the thinking routine framework starting by observing an object. Then they present their thinking through drawing pictures and creating meaningful dialogue with themselves. They can visualize their dreams and goals connecting to their lives and experience. This art-based pedagogy encourages students to expand and extend their thinking. They are encouraged to think positively and share in a secure environment to strength their roles as University students. To conclude, (1) Visible Thinking is not just inviting students to think but intend to make thinking visible by means of an artwork, an image or an artifact. (2) Visible Thinking is not just encouraging students to make thoughtful and personal interpretation of the image but also invite classmates as cautious and critical observers to feedback to enrich the reflection. (3) Visible Thinking allows students to see the future and feel the affect inside by creating a more comprehensive, integrated picture of connecting their past and future.
Students will join the visible thinking activities and will be invited to do survey and interview after the end of the course. They will benefit by
1. Increasing their level of reflective learning
2. Initiating rich classroom dialogue by means of visible images
3. Engaging students to be aware of their past and future
Creating authentic future by understanding more about themselves, thinking positively and setting up goals.
Project Start Year: 2017, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮, CHAN-TAM, Mei Ngan Tammy 陳譚美顏
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The Path of Hong Kong Early Childhood Education Development: Investigating the Narratives of the Practitioners from 60's to 90's
To help students to appreciate the process of ECE development and to learn from the past, it is very essential to offer various resources to allow students to identify different perspectives and points of views. Nevertheless, it seems that the present teaching materials are mainly reports and critical journals and we have neglected the stories from our local ECE educators whom have made significant contributions to our profession. Their stories can convey moral and practical lessons about how to act and provide the basis for assessing the reasons for success or failure. This project aims at collecting the narratives of our local academics and practitioners about Hong Kong ECE development. Studying the ECE development is not just for knowing but also for thinking. The selected ECE practitioners are best represented in history. From reading the narratives, students can interpret the ECE development from different perspectives. From the collection of multiple stories, students can understand how policies or social events can impact practitioners in different ways. In fact, this is not just a collection of narratives but also a source of wisdom on which we must be inspired.
Project Start Year: 2009, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN, Po Lin 陳寶蓮
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Parental Stress – A Comparison between Primary School Parents and Kindergarten Parents
The aim of this study is to investigate how parental stress may relate to social expectation of a good parent. Moreover, it is anticipated that these social expectations on parenting kindergarten children and primary school may vary due to the different school demands and children’s developmental characteristics. There are few data on comparing parenting stress between parents with preschool children and primary school children. The parent study aims to examine preschool and primary school parents’ perception of parenting stress.
Project Start Year: 2008, Principal Investigator(s): CHAN-TAM Mei Ngan Tammy (CHAN Po Lin as Co-Investigator)
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