Early childhood teacher involvement in children’s socio-dramatic play: creative drama as a scaffolding tool

We acknowledge the importance of scaffolding during play; thus, the present study explores the ways early childhood (EC) teachers provide guidance during children’s socio-dramatic play and how they employ creative drama in their play interactions. Data collection included the play video recordings of an in-service teacher with a drama background, who was used as an instrumental study, to then explore the videos of 17 student teachers. Findings suggest that EC teachers employ multiple levels of guidance during play with the most frequent being indirect involvement. All of them employed the drama technique ‘teacher in role’ in order to include new elements in children’s scenario, to develop roles and to support material uses. Creative drama can develop a proximal development play zone through which teachers can support role and scenario development during socio-dramatic play. This study proposes a three-stage training framework for teachers to develop their play skills.