Supervised play practica with children: A program for student teachers

Abstract

Many teacher-education programs make little provision for student teachers to actually interact with children in order to develop communication skills. A play practicum involving a series of 14 sessions with a small group of kindergarten children was provided to student teachers who had completed a communication-skills course. Comparisons were made among participants, students who had had only the communication-skills course, and those in a control group. Twenty-four subjects, 3 men and 21 women, from the first-year class in the Faculty of Education were randomly assigned to play practicum ( n = 8), communication course ( n = 8), and control groups ( n = 8). Skill levels in the areas of listening to feelings, communicating feelings, and setting limits were measured immediately after training by both a questionnaire and a teaching task. Two months after training the questionnaire was readministered. Student teachers in the play practicum program demonstrated higher frequencies of the communication skills in the teaching task. Both treatment groups surpassed the control group in performance on the questionnaire. These differences in questionnaire results were maintained over 2 months. Further, play practicum subjects received higher instructor ratings on listening skills and demonstration of empathy some 4 months after training. It was concluded that the play practicum program was more effective in assisting student teachers to learn and to apply important communication skills. Those in the communication-skills course applied skills only in hypothetical situations, not in actual teaching situations.