Abstract:
The purpose of the research was to determine preschool teacher’s awareness, attitudes,
and challenges in implementing play-based learning in the Gondar City administration.
A concurrent embedded design was used to achieve this mixed method research design.
Data were collected from 162 preschool teachers and 10 school principals. Preschool t
teachers were selected through simple random sampling whereas principals were
selected through purposive sampling. As a result, the researcher used a self-developed
questionnaire for preschool teachers with a total of 44 closed-ended items as the major
data collection instrument, while 5 semi-structured interview questions were used to
triangulate the data gathered through the questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, Pearson
product moment correlation, multiple linear regression, and theme analysis were used to
examine the data. According to the findings of this study preschool teachers have a
reasonable level of awareness and a positive attitude toward the implementation of play based learning. This study also found that awareness was strongly associated with
attitude and play-based learning, whereas attitude and play-based learning were strongly
associated with play-based learning implementation. Furthermore, variations in
participants' awareness, attitude, experience, educational level, and training style
accounted for around 55.9% of the difference in play-based learning implementation.
Preschool teacher’s perform diverse and complicated tasks in implementing play-based
learning in the classroom, according to the current study, but they face a variety of
problems in doing so, including competence, structural, attitudinal, conceptual, and
resource challenges. In conclusion, the study found that the connected aspects of
preschool teacher’s' awareness and attitude, as well as their demographic variables, can
predict the application of play-based learning.
