Greek preschool children's playful behaviour: assessment and correlation with personal and family characteristics

Abstract

All children and young people need to play. The impulse to play is innate. Yet, the pure essence of play is playfulness a notion not new, yet limitedly researched. Playfulness refers to the individual style each child has to play, which is linked to personality descriptors and attributes. The present study had a twofold aim. On the one hand, it aimed at assessing Greek preschool children's playfulness employing Children's Playfulness Scale. On the other hand, it aimed at examining whether personal and family variables affect children's playfulness. Results suggest that the sample exhibits rather medium levels of playfulness and that during play they enact more cognitive spontaneity, compared with other components of playfulness. Thus, correlation analysis showed that playfulness components predict one another and that several personal and family characteristics correlate with playfulness' aspects. Implications are discussed and suggestions for future research are formulated.

Keywords:

• playfulness
• playful behaviour
• play
• theories
• correlations
• early childhood education and care
• 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 21 papers in Scientific journals and she has presented papers in 9 conferences. She is ACEI country representative in Greece.