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 basic education but also provide quality educational experiences. A child-friendly school is child-focused 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 preschool by exploring the teachers’ roles and perspectives towards it. For this, five teachers were purposively selected from the five Pre-schools schools in Batticaloa Manumai north. Their perspectives about the child-friendly learning environment were recorded through face-to-face semistructured interviews. The collected data were analyzed by using a qualitative approach. The study found that there is a vast gap between outsiders’ views and the reality of schools regarding child-friendly learnercentered learning environments. In such a situation, the teacher’s role seems to be dynamic and creative to create a child-friendly learning environment at school.