Teachers’ roles on creating child-friendly learning environment in pre-school

Abstract

Creating child friendly schools is an international movement that encourages schools to operate in the best interests of children. Child friendly schools not only help children realize their right to a basic education but also provide quality educational experiences. A child friendly school is childfocused and child-centered. These schools promote inclusion and help children learn what they need to learn, while teaching them how to learn. They ensure a healthy and safe learning environment, eliminate gender stereotypes, and encourage child participation. Ministries of education, development agencies, and schools should all understand and support the basic characteristics of a child friendly school and work toward incorporating these characteristics into all child learning environments. This study aims at identifying the child-friendly learning environment at Pre-school by exploring the teachers’ roles and perspectives towards it. For this, five teachers were purposively selected from the five Pre-schools schools in Batticaloa Manmunai north. Their perspectives about the childfriendly learning environment were recorded through face-to-face semi-structured interview. The collected data were analyzed by using qualitative approach. The study found that there is vast gap between outsiders’ view and the reality of schools regarding child-friendly learner centered learning environment. In such situation, the teacher’s role seems to be dynamic and creative to create child friendly learning environment at school.