Linking Cultures through Play: Children Exchange Cultural Elements through Play Activities in Kindergarten

N

16

Play; Cultural Differences; Kindergarten; Immigrants; Early Childhood Education; Preschool Teachers; Teacher Attitudes; Young Children; Student Attitudes; Child Behavior; Pilot Projects; Observation; Interviews; Foreign Countries

The recent years in our country we are facing an increasingly great number of immigrant students, mainly from East European countries and the Balkans, particularly in many Greek elementary schools and kindergartens. Aim of the presented study is to sketch the problems that came out from the co-existence of students with different cultural elements. In addition to this, aims to record the views and beliefs of early childhood education teachers who work with students coming from different cultures. In the current presentation we will demonstrate the pilot project of the research. The sample of our pilot project was five kindergartens with different social and cultural features from the area of Thessaly. We observed 83 children (16 of them are emigrants) in five kindergartens for 3 different school days. Two observation matrixes were used, which were constructed for the purposes of the study, based on the literature and the previous experience of the researchers. Moreover, we recorded the views and beliefs of the five Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers using the method of semi-structured interviews. Finally, we recorded the views of 20 children from Greece, with the same way, concerning their beliefs about their new emigrant friends. The first findings of our research show us that independently of teachers' belief, children get over their cultural differences mainly during spontaneous play activities. (student demographic, interview and observation matrix information is appended. Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

As Provided

36

2009

ED504362