Pretend play involves representation of objects or individuals as another for amusement seeking and one of the multifaceted play activities that children engage in for fun, yet promotes a myriad of skills development and learning including cognitive, language, social, and emotional skills. Children across gender, geographical and cultural backgrounds engage in pretend play, however, there is still limited information available about Malaysian children’s pretend play. It could be attributed to limited pretend play assessment available in the Malay language, or suitable for usage in Malaysian culture. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a Malay-language pretend play assessment kit to be used for assessing Malaysian children’s pretend play. The study adopted the mixed method study guided by the Design and Development Research (DDR) approach. Phase I determined 115 early childhood education (ECE) educators’ and 85 parents’ needs for a pretend play assessment kit through an online survey. In Phase II, the assessment protocol and kit were designed based on the online survey, the Taxonomy of Pretend Play, and children’s play observation. The final protocol and kit were developed through Nominal Group Technique (NGT) process with five experts comprises of an observation protocol and suggested play materials. The usability of the developed protocol and kit was conducted with an ECE educator and parents of young children in Phase III. The pretend play assessment kit is valid, reliable and deemed usable to assess children’s general pretend play skills, but needs to be interpreted with caution due to the absence of age-affiliated scores.

Authors:
Iylia Dayana Shamsudin, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
Masne Kadar, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Hanif Farhan Mohd Rasdi, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Juppri Bacotang, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia
Nur Iman Aishah Azhar, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
Ted Brown, Monash University, Australia

About the Presenter(s)
Dr IYLIA DAYANA SHAMSUDIN is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Sultan Idris Education University in Malaysia

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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