The Greek–Cypriot early childhood educational reform: introducing play as a participatory learning process and as children's right

Abstract

This paper provides a brief description of the Greek–Cypriot early childhood education system and focuses on the current education reform. We focus on one of the main changes of the reform, a new status for play within the daily educational programme. The goal of this paper is two-fold; first to portray play in the former and current proposed curricula though document analysis and second to provide examples of the current practices through non-participant observations and interviews with children, teachers and principals, concerning the role of play and describe how these have been traditionalised. Findings show the different perspectives on play and support the need for the reconceptualisation of play, since free activities are basically organised around structured and teacher-directed activities. The paper provides a stance on play which allows children to be social agents, supports socio-cultural processes of learning and encourages participation in meaningful play activities.

Keywords:

• play
• curriculum reform
• participation

Notes on contributors

Eleni Loizou is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the Department of Education at the University of Cyprus. Her research focuses on an array of early childhood themes such as: young children's humor, empowering young children and teachers, language and early literacy, early childhood curriculum, infant, toddler development and practice, and teacher education. In 2009 she was appointed as the Co-ordinator of the Committee for the Early Childhood Curriculum which was part of the Educational Reform in Cyprus and is one of the principal authors of the proposed New Early Childhood Curriculum.

Sofia Avgitidou (D.Phil. Sussex) is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Western Macedonia. She has studied children's peer relationships, play and co-operative learning. Her current research focuses on beliefs about childhood and action research projects to enhance participatory and dialogical practices in early childhood and primary education.