PreK-12 Educational Evaluation
Brian Dooley, EdM
Technical Advisor, Research and Evaluation
FHI 360, United States
Location: Room 203
Abstract Information: Teacher RePlay is a formative reflection tool to support teachers to improve their practice of learning through play for children aged 3 – 12 years. It includes direct observation protocol for teachers to observe the behaviors of their students during a playful learning activity as well as a protocol for collecting the perspectives of the children themselves. It is hoped that the teacher's observations, coupled with children's own perspectives on the playful learning activity, will spur rich reflection and understanding of classroom practice, ultimately improving children's experiences of learning through play. The tool is available in paper form and as a digital app that can be easily used on a smartphone device.
The Children ReAct module within Teacher RePlay provides a way to gather children’s perspectives and feelings—those aspects that cannot be directly observed. Using photo-elicitation, the Children ReAct module facilitates children’s sharing of their responses to the LtP activities implemented by the teacher in the classroom. It allows for triangulation of learning with data collected in the observation module in Teacher RePlay, embedding children’s voices and lived experiences into the teacher’s own understanding and observation of an LtP activity. The Children ReAct module can be administered by the teacher after their own observation, or by a third-party observer or peer who facilitates the discussion with the children after the LtP activity, and then shares what they learned with the teacher during a reflection session.
Teacher RePlay was developed over the course of two years under the PALICE project, based on formative research and later 8 weeks of piloting with over 350 teachers in three countries; Bangladesh, Colombia, and Uganda. The pilots showed the value of providing a tool that strengthens the agency of teachers over their own practice and deepens the connections between teachers and learners by integrating children’s voices directly into a teacher’s self-assessment and self-reflection. The PALICE project was implemented through the collaboration of an international team led by FHI 360, with University of Notre Dame, Institute of Informatics and Development, Luigi Giussani Institute of Higher Education, and Universidad de Los Andes, as well as individual contributions from Dr. Angela Pyle (University of Toronto, Ontario) and Dr. Jennifer Zosh (Pennsylvania State University). PALICE was funded and supported by the LEGO Foundation from 2021-2023.
During this demonstration, participants will have a chance to download the Teacher RePlay app, and practice coding videos of both a lesson observation and a children’s focus group. Participants will then see how the in-app analytics tool presents a summary of the user’s data over time, and automatically compares the observation and focus group data to highlight differences between the teacher’s and student’s perceptions of the learning through play activity.
Relevance Statement: Research suggests that not all types of instruction support children’s learning equally. For instance, guided play methods have been found to outperform direct instruction methods for obtaining a variety of outcomes. In exploring why guided play is so beneficial across learning outcomes, Hirsh-Pasek, Zosh, and colleagues (2015) reviewed the science of learning literature and argued that there are pillars of learning - or characteristics that maximize learning. When humans are active (minds-on), engaged (not distracted), learning meaningful content (connects to the larger world, their previous understanding, and potentially their passion), and socially interactive, learning is maximized. A few years later, Zosh and colleagues (Zosh et al., 2018b; Zosh, Hopkins, et al., 2017) expanded this model to specifically examine how play naturally leverages these characteristics and supports learning via iterative thinking in a joyful context. They argue that play naturally leverages the characteristics that lead to learning, and that guided play is so effective because it engages these characteristics during a purposefully designed activity with a specified learning goal.
A key challenge is that these characteristics (active, engaged, meaningful, socially interactive, joyful) are not in a present/absent concrete state. Similarly, even play types exist along a continuum where there are stronger and weaker ways of facilitating free play, guided play, and teacher-directed play. While this creates a challenge for measurement, it also provides a benefit for implementation. By viewing these characteristics as a continuum of their own, teachers can facilitate in a variety of ways - for example, ways that are suitable for their context, the lesson at hand, the children’s age and educational needs, and their own strengths.
At the start of the tool development process, the PALICE team developed a Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REA) to capture children’s and teachers’ experiences and perspectives of learning through play (LtP) in a sample of schools/learning centers in Bangladesh, Colombia, and Uganda. Given the limited research on how children and teachers understood and perceived LtP in the three countries that were the focus of PALICE, the team wanted to collect preliminary information that would (a) inform the design and adaptation of a learning experience framework (LEF), (b) inform the design of the Teacher RePlay direct observation and Children ReAct focus group protocols, and (c) allow us the opportunity to test out these data collection protocols with young children. The findings helped add to our understanding of how children and teachers discuss the five characteristics of LtP and their implications for the design of both the LEF and the Teacher RePlay tool.
There are currently no tools available to teachers that support their practice of learning through play in the classroom, in the level of depth that the Teacher RePlay tool does. The tool allows teachers to become expert observers of behaviors in their students, equips them with coaching tips, and allows them to hear about the learning through play experience in the students' own words.
Technical Report, including literature review, conceptual framework and pilot data: https://cms.learningthroughplay.com/media/2pnndqyq/teacher-replay-technical-report.pdf
Overview of the tool: https://learningthroughplay.com/measuring-learning-through-play/teacher-replay