Exploring Learning through Play in Mexican Preschool Education: Teachers' Perspectives and Practices
Play has long been recognised for its importance in children’s wellbeing and cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development (Trawick-Smith, 2016; Whitebread, 2012; Yogman et al., 2018; Zosh, Hassinger-Das, et al., 2022). Over the past decade, policymakers, researchers, and advocates worldwide have increasingly called for the integration of play into preschool education (UNICEF, 2018, 2024). As a result, Learning through Play (LtP) has been incorporated into early years national curricula in several countries, and teachers have been encouraged to adopt and integrate it into their pedagogical practices (Pramling Samuelsson & Fleer, 2009). However, the way teachers implement LtP seems to be shaped by both the educational contexts in which they teach, as well as their own perspectives on play and LtP (Le Courtois et al., 2024; Mardell et al., 2023; Zosh, Gaudreau, et al., 2022). Consequently, there is a need for further exploration of what LtP entails in specific contexts and how teachers understand it, particularly in Global Majority countries, where evidence on LtP remains limited (Bubikova-Moan et al., 2019). This thesis aims to explore teachers’ perspectives on LtP and how they integrate it within the Mexican preschool education context by addressing the research question: How do Mexican teachers understand and incorporate LtP into preschool practice? To respond to this research question, a qualitative case study design was employed consisting of two cases. The cases provided insights into teachers’ perspectives and practices from two types of preschool services in Mexico: the mainstream ‘urban’ preschool service and the community-based ‘rural’ preschool service. Data was gathered from January to July 2022 using multiple methods. Teachers’ perspectives regarding the conceptualisation, the purpose, and their role in LtP were collected through a specialised interview schedule employing elicitation artefacts, such as pictures and lesson plans. Lesson plans were also used to investigate their enactment of LtP, and a subset of teachers were invited to participate in a day-long classroom observation where fieldnotes were collected. A video-stimulated recall interview was conducted after the observation to gain deeper insight into how teachers’ perspectives and practices are connected and the factors that may shape how LtP takes place. All data were analysed thematically using deductive and inductive coding (Bingham & Witkowsky, 2021; Miles et al., 2020; Saldan a, 2021). Furthermore, following Stapley and colleagues (2021), an ideal-type analysis was conducted to explore the dominant profiles representing how teachers understand and put LtP into practice. The findings show that urban and rural teachers view LtP as a component of their pedagogical approach, distinguishing it from teacher-led and structured tasks and ‘free play’. They argued that LtP addresses various purposes, mainly children-focused, but also, teacher- and process-focused ones. They engage in LtP through eight forms of participation. However, there are two main overarching roles teachers in this study enact when incorporating LtP: guide and co-player-guide. These roles show that teachers actively participate in LtP and consistently maintain a certain degree of control over the LtP activities, leaving less agency or control for the children. By analysing the individual teachers’ perspectives of the purpose of LtP and their role in it, two distinct profiles were identified: the ‘academic-oriented’ profile, focused on academic learning and mainly represented by rural teachers, and the ‘holistic-oriented’ profile focusing on fostering a broader range of skills, mainly represented by urban teachers. This variation was also reflected in how teachers plan and conduct LtP in practice. Lastly, teachers mentioned interconnected factors that, in their view, shape LtP, including those related to the teachers, children, class and classroom, preschool, stakeholders, national education system, as well as the pandemic. Urban and rural teachers emphasised the importance of teacher skills, attitudes, knowledge, and the role of parents and teacher collectives. Differences influencing LtP in rural and urban classrooms were noted in terms of class sizes, multi-aged groups, and the curriculum and pedagogical guidelines. These findings provide a teacher-informed, holistic view, of how LtP is understood and incorporated in Mexican preschools, highlighting how context-specific factors shape it. A comparison of the findings of this study with the existing literature on LtP reveals that teachers’ perspectives and practices in this context show some unique variations from those in other studies. Nonetheless, variations are also apparent within the same Mexican context itself. These variations are most likely influenced by factors related to the teacher, classroom, preschool, and broader educational policy. These insights contribute to our understanding of how LtP can be adapted and integrated into existing pedagogical approaches, shaped by the context in which it is situated. Furthermore, they shed light on the factors that can be addressed in future action and research to promote a more extensive, beneficial, and contextually relevant use of LtP in Mexico.
case study, comparative education, context-specific factors, Early childhood education, global majority, Ideal-type analysis, international education, latin america, learning through play, mexico, Pedagogical practices, play, Play-based learning, qualitative, sociocultural differences, teacher perceptions, teacher perspectives, Thematic analysis, urban and rural preschools, Video-stimulated recall interview
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