Exploring The Role Of A Childminder In Supporting Child-Initiated Play Among 3-4-Year-Old Children

Background

The child initiated play is one of the important approaches of learning at the earlier years of the children. In this child-initiated play, the role of the Childminder is an important aspect that needs to be investigated to improve the learning process of children.  Child-initiated play in simple terms could be the playing process where the selection of playmate, activity and approach of play is the decision of the child (Craft et al., 2012).

This child initiated play when becomes the process of learning, have different dimensions in the process. In this process the child’s learning pursuit and engagement is decided by the child, this play and learning ownership gives the freedom to the child to subvert the purpose of the game to other purpose; personal experience of the child is often brought into the play, role play driven learning activity of the children which have the impression of adult-led playing rules (Waters and Maynard, 2010).

The Childminders are the professionals who are in charge of childcare for certain hours of the day. Childminders would have to undergo certain training and development activities for the job profiles at the local authority level; the inspection and their registration is done by local authorities. The general role and responsibility of this childcare profile are the child health and safety, quality care, contribution in the child’s learning and playing process (Yates et al., 2014). The detailed job roles and responsibility shows that there are strong differentiation points between Childminder and babysitting jobs. The overall child care and development activity contribution from Childminder’s side makes it important to investigate the Childminder’s role for the growth and developments of child, but a wider investigation is not feasible in that direction, hence, the child-initiated play is chosen in the current research to be investigated.

Research background

In recent times one of the significant and waited supports from the government came in the form of entitlement for the ‘extended childcare’ and it is decided to be rolled out all over England. The facility is offered to the working parents of the children who are between 3-4 years old (cambridgeshire.gov.uk. 2017). From last September 2017, these parents would get government fund for the childcare and education for 30 hours for every week during this period (cambridgeshire.gov.uk. 2017).

 Here both parents need to be working for 16 hours for every week at above the ‘national living wages’ but the yearly income must not cross £100,000 per annum. On the other hand 15 hours per week early education would be available to every 3-4-year-old children without considering the specific working status of the parents (cambridgeshire.gov.uk. 2017). In these funded cases the registered Childminder would be sent for the job. Considering this change in the legislation, the role of Childminder for the overall development for a large section of children from England becomes highly important. On the other hand, there is a debate on the application of the adult-led and the child-initiated play approach of learning style for children.

The play initiated by the child is a supporting approach for the ideas of the child and proving opportunity to the child for their learning process control (Swindells and Stagnitti, 2006). This approach helps the child to gain experience in utilising resource and also gain experience first-hand. This child initiated approach may sound that everything is done by the child but in most cases the adult initiates these activities but the child gets the required space to lead that from that point (Woods, 2017). Therefore for the childminder it is the balancing act that is essential for the learning process of the child. Under these situation and subject background, the current research has been planned to investigate the role of the childminder for 3-4 year-old children and the child initiated play activity.

Research rationale

Research rational 

The roles and importance of the childminder is already known and also investigated academically. There are different roles and responsibility played by the childminder in their regular work. Some studies in this regard have investigated the role of the childminder for the childcare based on the home environment (Ang et al., 2016; Jackson and Jackson, 2013). Therefore, the research took the holistic approach in the investigation of the childminder’s role (O’Connell, 2011). There are also other researches that focused on the legislative requirement for this sector.  

On the other hand there have been many researches that were done to understand the role of the child-initiated play for the overall learning process of the children (Craft et al., 2012; Swindells and Stagnitti, 2006; Woods, 2017). Focused research on this subject has provided some important insights that are now in use for the child’s learning process. But there is a need to investigate the child-initiated play and the role of the childminder in this process.

This specific focus of the childminder’s role for the child-initiated play is a gap in the literature that the current research has found. Considering this gap the current research has plan to study the role of a Childminder in supporting and promoting child-initiated play among 3-4-year-old children. This 3-4 years age group is specifically selected by considering the legislative or the government support as discussed in the research background section of the report.

Aims and objective

The main aim of this research is to investigate the role of a Childminder to support and promote child-initiated play among 3-4-year-old children

Objectives

• To research the dynamics of child-initiated play
• To understand the Childminder’s contributions in promoting child-initiated play
• To evaluate the relevance of child-initiated play to the development of the child

The holistic development of a child is highly dependent on the educational environment and also care provided to the child (UNESCO, 2014). There are also research reports that suggested that the outcomes of the later year’s development for a child are related with the learning experience of the early years (Tickell, 2011).

The childcares that are based in the home environment have different provision and because of that, it needs to be understood specifically. According to Rusby et al (2013) the interaction between the child and the caregiver, attitude of the caregiver is highly important for the school readiness, learning process of the child and social behaviour of the child at later life. Therefore, the role of the childminder is highly important for the child’s current and future learning and also social behaviour, as the childminder is the primer caregiver during their service time.

According the Cohen and Uhry (2011) there is high relation among the free play or child initiated play and literacy. Therefore the process of learning is highly impacted by the process of playing for the children. According to Van Hoorn et al (2014) the process of play needs to be at the centre of the curriculum development for children. There has been a number of studies that have showed that the connections between different skill development among the children and an important role of play process in that development process.

According to Rakoczy (2007) the play process is important for taking a perspective and also adjustment process at the school.  On the other hand Piker (2013) stated that the playing process is highly important for the language and communication related skills development. For example the development of complex narrative, literacy, learning language is influenced by the playing process. The study done by Ginsburg (2017) is more focused on the math like general aptitude for development for the science related subjects and skills. Therefore, the process of problem solving would also be highly impacted by the playing process of the children. 

Aims and objectives

But in many cases the importance of the playing process is ignored in the early development period of the child. The playing that is led by the adult, or initiated by adults or initiated by the child, in all its form in many cases, gets less attention from these practitioners as well as the school curriculum process. A study that is done by Lynch (2015) especially the child initiated one is present at minimum level if not fully erased from the child’s activity at the kindergarten level. This aspect shows the kind of importance that is given to playing; especially child initiated one in the child’s development process at the institutional level. One of the major reasons can be cited as the test-score-based performance monitoring process (Nicholson et al., 2016).

The child initiated play has been investigated in different studies. According to Maynard et al (2013a) one observation expressed that the duration of a child initiated approach of playing lasts till the child feels the interest in that playing approach. Therefore, these types of play are high on concentration and engagement. This makes the learning process more effective in terms of the child-initiated playing process. The child approach of playing is more useful to let the children explore their area of interests. This approach does not only improve the learning opportunity but also let confidence grow within the child (Maynard et al., 2013b).

On the other has Dender and Stagnitti (2011) stated that the absence of the adult in the play directing process would let the children take more responsibility and they independently interact with each other, which result in better social skill development among the children. This approach of playing and learning improves their skills in utilising the resource properly, becoming more innovative (Maynard et al., 2013a). Therefore, it is not only the adult led or initiated, but also the child-initiated play that plays a significant part in the child’s cognitive and development process.

Before understanding the role of the childminder in the play and the learning process of the children, the general role of the childminder needs to be analysed through different literary source.  There was a debate among the academician about the role of the childminder and can that be the substitute of the mother’s role for their child (Robb, 2016).

There are few academicians who earlier casted aspersion on the childminder’s occupation as a valid one. But according to Hayes (2010) the childminder’s duty in their job has been recognised as the role played by the parent for their children. The literature and discussion also in turn impacted the perception of the general public and the people who are employed in the childminder profession. On the other hand there was negative publicity of the job as well as the role played by the childminder in the past. Robb (2016) stated that this negative impression has impacted the motivational level as well as job satisfactory level of the childminder.

Therefore the role of the childminder needs to be understood from the very close observation and personal experience basis (Hayes, 2010). The current investigation of the childminder role in the promotion and support delivering process for the child initiated play, also needed to be understood from the similar investigated approach. This close observation would be useful for developing proper value aspect for the childminder to follow otherwise the devaluation would prevent the achievement of the fullest potential of the child a well as the experiential growth of the childminder (Garrick, 2010).

Child-initiated play and learning process

One of the important responsibilities of the childminder is the children specific care deliver. According to the Martland (2016) listening the children, understanding their needs in important to provide proper care to the children, therefore the listening role is one of the important role for the childminder. Continuing this children specific care process the engagement role with the parents is also important.  The parent spends more time with their children and they know their children better. Under the circumstances of lack of language spoken ability of the child or expressive ability, engaging with the parent becomes important for the childminder to be more effective to take holistic care of the children (Garrick, 2010). Therefore the childminder need to fulfil multidimensional role in their job to be effective.  

In the child learning process important role is played by the adult in the form of teacher or childminder or the primary caregiver. According to Johnson (2014) the teacher or the caregiver; in this case, childminder, must provide an enriched environment to the child that improves their learning process. Therefore the resource supports proper environment delivering support, taking care of the health and safety during the playing process and so on is the responsibility of the childminder.

According to Nicholson et al (2016) the monitoring approach that these adults take during this child initiated play are highly important as the adult does not only provide the crucial support but also help in the learning process of children in different important concepts. According to Weisberg et al (2015), in the literacy development process this teacher supported and child initiated playing process have been able to deliver better development result. Therefore, the adults also play an important role in this total child-initiated playing process. The process is not happening in absence of the adult but through an active presence of the adult. Considering these implications further studies to investigate role of childminder in this child-initiated play process needs to be done in a more focused manner.

The importance of child-initiated play and the role of the Childminder in that process for the child of 3-4 years of age group is the main area of investigation for the current research. This research has to take different things into consideration to make successful recommendation and provide useful insights. Therefore the research opinion is the appropriate approach that would be implemented in the current research to develop proper research method to reach its goal (Bhattacherjee, 2012).

Research philosophy

This art of the research would be useful for directing the research based on the specific belief based approach. The benefit based approach would impact the process from data collection to the final recommendation and conclusion of the research (Taylor et al., 2015). There are different research philosophy and those are the interpretivism and positivism. The positivism philosophy states that the reality is objective in nature and needs to be investigated through the scientific approach. This stable reality investigation approach from the objective angle of research is done through isolating the researcher from the examining phenomenon. In this philosophical approach of investigation the great reliance is seen on the earlier research work (Dang and Pheng, 2015).

Role of childminders in early childhood education

 The final result, conclusion or the insight is drawn from combining the current and the earlier researches.  But in the current research the interpretivism is followed. This is the philosophy that puts more emphasis on the human interest for conducting the study. The route of social construction based instrument, shared meaning, consciousness and language are followed in this philosophy of research to understand the reality (Silverman, 2016). This philosophy influences the researcher to use the qualitative research to investigate the phenomenon.

The use of the secondary research has also relevance in this type of research but the overall also meaning or the theoretical direction comes at the end of the research (Major and Savin-Baden, 2012). The current research topic of understanding the importance of child initiated play and the role of the Childminder in that process for the child of 3-4 years of age group is a study on a social science based subject. Considering this the interpretivism is the appropriate philosophy for the current research.  

Purpose

The purpose of the research can have different dimensions. Different purposes like the explanatory, exploratory or descriptive are some of the purposes of the research. In the current research, explanatory purpose of research would be used. This purpose is useful for the subjects that are not thoroughly researched earlier and sometime may need a fresh approach (Major and Savin-Baden, 2012). The research subjects are properly explained in the research report from which the research progresses.

In the current research the investigation of the importance of child initiated play and the role of the Childminder in that process for the child of 3-4 years of age group has found out the important gap in the existing literature. Moreover, two different streams of research are getting combined to develop a fresh perspective. Considering this, the explanatory purpose of the research is useful for the current research (Taylor et al., 2015). The purpose of the research follows the philosophy of the research and that helps in the research method selection. The explanatory research would be having the qualitative approach of the research to gather data analysis to them.

Approach

There are two different approach of research available to the current research and those are the inductive and deductive approach of research. The current research would use the inductive approach where no direct theoretical approach is followed but the investigation is done by observing the information gathered in the current research (Bhattacherjee, 2012). The application of the inductive reasoning for the information analysis and developing possible pattern which would later be utilised for the theoretical idea formation is done (Silverman, 2016). Better use of the qualitative method is applied in the approach of the research. Considering all of these the current research finds the inductive approach as the most suitable approach for the current research.

Research design

In this part of the research the general design of the research to gather data effectively and also analyse those efficient is ensured though proper design of the research. First decision for the current research is the selection of the primary or the secondary approach of the research. The primary approach follows the fresh data collection for the current research whereas the secondary research is done through collecting the existing data (Neuman, 2013). In the current research the primary would be applied where fresh data would be collected from the childminder. Here the secondary data would be used to understand the research background and premise.

Literature review

On the other hand there are two different approach of primary data collection one is the qualitative method and another one is the quantitative method of data collection (Weber, 2017).  The above section of the current research would sue the qualitative approach of data collection from the childminder. This data collection would be done through the interview process where the semi structured questions would be used for interviewing the childminder. In this part of interview process the sampling approach of research design would be important and their two childminder would be selected to interview (Lewis, 2015).

The selection would be done through the non-probabilistic sampling approach where the selection would be done on the basis of prior acquaintances. The main strategy of the research would be the selection of case study approach. Here the interview responses would be taken as the case study of these two childminder and their experience about the child initiating play would be used to explain the importance of the childminder for the child’s learning process (Weber, 2017).

Under this research design section one of the most important aspects is the chosen approach to analyse the collected data. For the quantitative approach of research the statistical method is one of the most regarded approaches of analysis whereas as for the qualitative data there are few approaches that are followed as the qualitative data does not provide scope to apply a procedure that is like a formulation unlike the quantitative analysis  (Dang and Pheng, 2015).  These kind of qualitative data are more open for the intuitive or subjective analysis than the more tangible approach based quantitative data analysis.

Therefore in developing appropriate rigour in the data analysis process three different approaches can be considered and those are the thematic analysis, deductive and narrative analysis. The thematic analysis starts with the process of reading or listening to the interview for the familiarisation process. Then texts are coded, patterns are identified for the development, data based theme reviewing, and finally the identified themes are defined and described. On the other hand the narrative analysis has the aim to develop meaning of a story (Green et al., 2012).

In this process first the stories are gathered, then meaning and insight are drawn from the analysis process, at the next step the comparison of the stories is done for the further interpretation and then finally based on this final interpretation a new story is developed connecting all of those. This approach of qualitative data analysis is more popular for the social science projects (Dang and Pheng, 2015). Deductive approach is based on the data deduction process based on the already identified framework of the research.

The framework is used for the data analysis method here. After considering all of the different approach of data analysis it can be said that the analysis of the data would be best done through the thematic analysis method. The current is not based on the earlier theoretical background as discussed earlier; therefore the deductive approach would not be suitable for the current research. In the interview process the child minder would not speak about their personal story rather they would be interview through a semi structured questionnaire (Green et al., 2012). Therefore the narrative analysis is not preferred here rather the thematic analysis would be the most suitable one here considering the scope to link the child initiated play and childminder role for developing a  theme that could be further investigated through specific quantitative research later.

Methodology

Limitation of the research

The current research has an important limitation in the amount of data. The interview-based data collection needs shared experiences of some other childminders. This would have brought greater variety of information in the current research (Lewis, 2015). On the other hand the consultation of the existing research and data got somehow limited because of the accessibility issue of that information.

Ethical aspect

One of the important ethical approaches in the current research is the privacy, confidentiality and data security. There are some personal and professional information of childminders that would be discussed in the current research. To maintain the proper confidentiality, the analysis part of the research is using the code instead of names of the childminders (Neuman, 2013). Another thing is the autonomy of the respondent. A prior permission was taken in the form of a consent paper and during the interview; no amount of manipulation would be applied to have them respond differently.

The audio records would be used with highest data privacy and security aspect and would be destroyed in due process after the completion of the research work and final evaluation. There are some sensitive issues that may come up during the interview process and those were handled with care (Bhattacherjee, 2012). On the other hand, no amount of disruption in the daily work of the respondent was committed as the interview was carried out as per their convenience. The data analysis would be done in a reliable and trustworthy manner. No amount of data manipulation or personal opinion was entertained in the current research (Drost, 2011).

Validity and reliability

The validity aspect of this research would focus on the proper tool section for the current research. In the current research the interview process is applied for the data collection and thematic approach for the analysis of those data. The interview process is standard qualitative tool and the followed ethical approach would be able to assure the reader about the validity (Miller et al., 2012).

The thematic approach is the most reliable approach data analysis for the qualitative data and application of this tool would improve the validity as well as the validity of the current research. The current researches have the specific purpose of explaining the role of the childminder for the child initiated play. Therefore the interview based qualitative approach is best suited to through light on this subject (Dang and Pheng, 2015).

This methodology of the current research would make the result valid for the future research for analysis the subject through quantitative approach. On the other hand most important reliability aspect of the current research would be dependent on the consistency and transparency aspect of the research. For the quantitative approach the transparency and consistence is important considering the chance of inclusion of the subjective understanding (Miller et al., 2012). The current well defined methodical approach would be followed in most consistent way and that would make the current research highly reliable for the reader. 

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