Preschool children's social and nonsocial play behaviours. Measurement and correlations with children's playfulness, behaviour problems and demographic characteristics

Abstract

Children's play contributes to their overall development. Yet, not all types of play have the same effects. On the contrary, nonsocial play has been found to be correlated with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The present study had a twofold aim. On the one hand it aimed at assessing Greek preschool children's social and nonsocial play, employing the Preschool Play Behaviour Scale, children's playfulness, employing Children's Playfulness Scale, and children's potential behaviour problems, with the Preschool Behaviour Questionnaire. On the other hand, it aimed at examining whether the types of play children engage in are predicted by their playfulness and by potential behaviour problems, as well as whether personal and family variables affect children's social and nonsocial play. Results suggest that the sample exhibits rather medium levels of nonsocial behaviours during play. Thus, correlation analysis showed that social and nonsocial types of play are predicted by playfulness components and that certain behavioural problems and personal and family characteristics are correlated with types of play. Implications are discussed and suggestions for future research are formulated.

Keywords:

• nonsocial play
• social play
• playfulness
• behaviour problems
• preschoolers
• Greece

Notes on contributor

Konstantina Rentzou graduated from the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, TEI of Epirus, in 2002 and in 2004 she finished her master of arts in early childhood education at Brunel University, West London. In 2011, she has been awarded with a PhD. Her PhD thesis aimed to evaluate quality in Greek preschool settings from researchers', parents' and early childhood educators' perspectives. She is currently teaching as hourly paid assistant professor in the Department of Early childhood education and care. Her teaching and research objectives are early childhood education and care. Her research interests are mainly about issues concerning parental involvement in preschools settings and parent caregiver relationships, involvement and recruitment of males in early childhood education, burnout syndrome, the organization of the preschool environment, enhancement and evaluation of quality early childhood education, children's play, children's – early childhood educators' relationships, parental attitudes towards early childhood education and care. She has published 22 papers in Scientific journals and she has presented papers in 9 conferences. She is ACEI country representative in Greece.