Research On The Quality Of Instructional Support In Kindergarten Outdoor Spontaneous Play

The core of preschool education quality is Teacher-child Interaction,and in recent years,Teacher-child Interaction has increasingly become an important theme in global Preschool Education research.The Classroom Assessment Scoring System proposed by Pianta et al.in the United States classifies the quality of Teacher-child Interaction into three Fields:Emotional Support,Class Management,and Instructional Support.The key to Teacher-child Interactions is Instructional Support.However,research findings from many countries indicate that teaching support,as one of the lowest quality fields of Teacher-child Interactions,has become an important factor limiting the quality of preschool education worldwide.In this study,we used the CLASS assessment framework to focus on the outdoor spontaneous games area of kindergartens.We conducted a statistical analysis of 26 kindergarten teachers in a provincial model kindergarten in Changsha,Hunan Province,by recording 36 outdoor spontaneous games interactions with preschool children.The level of teachers’ support strategies was examined in a quantitative and qualitative way.In the quantitative part of the study,the 12 behavioral indicators of the Instructional Support dimensions in CLASS were used as the codes for Instructional Support Strategies and customize the coding of children’s cognitive responses to the cognitive developmental dimension strategies used by teachers,based on the division of cognitive domain goals in Bloom’s classification theory of educational goals.and the coding of children’s cognitive responses to the strategies used by the teachers was customized.Statistical analysis was conducted.Based on this,the quantitative research results were examined and interpreted in conjunction with the qualitative analysis of the outdoor independent play activity recordings to reveal the specific status of the quality of teachers’ Instructional Support in kindergarten outdoor spontaneous play The results showed that:1.The status of teachers’ use of the three dimensions of Instructional Support strategies is shown as :teachers used the "Analysis and Reasoning" strategy most frequently and the "Integration" strategy least frequently under the cognitive development dimension;the "Feedback Loop" strategy was used most frequently in the feedback quality dimension,and the "Encouragement and Affirmation" strategy was used least frequently;Under the Language Modeling dimension,the "Repetition and Extension" strategy was used frequently,the "Self and Parallel Dialogue" strategy was used less frequently,and the "Advanced Language" strategy was used least frequently.The "Repetition and Extension" and "Advanced Language" strategies promoted low levels of response.The "Self and Parallel Dialogue" strategy did not promote high levels of response.2.Instructional Support strategies to stimulate children’s cognitive response level status are classified into four types: The "analysis and reasoning" strategy promoted more responses and more high cognitive responses;the "scaffolding","feedback loop","providing information","scaffolding","feedback loops","providing information" and "repetition and extension" strategies promoted more responses,but fewer responses at high cognitive levels;"creativity mining" and "facilitating thinking" strategies promote low response but high cognitive level response;"integration","real-life connection","encouragement and affirmation","advanced language" and "self and parallel dialogue" strategies promote fewer responses and fewer high cognitive responses.In general,teachers lacked knowledge of children’s existing experiences in outdoor spontaneous play and were not sufficiently aware of integration;they were unable to grasp children’s nearest developmental zone and were aware of feedback but not of high quality;their language modeling ability was weak,and their responses were more frequent but not deep enough.In order to improve the quality of teacher’s Instructional Support in kindergarten outdoor independent play,teachers should pay attention to children’s existing experiences and ensure children’s subjectivity;improve the quality of feedback and pay attention to the effectiveness of response;strengthen language demonstration and pay attention to the progressiveness of extension.