Abstract:
The study was designed generally to determine teachers’ perception of the influence of play on the development of pre-primary school children; the study was carried out in Otukpo Education Zone Benue State. The study was guided by four (4) research questions and four (4) hypotheses. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population for the study comprised of all the public pre-primary schools teachers in Otukpo Education zone Benue state numbering 1,500 teachers. The sample for the study was 315 pre-primary school teachers drawn from a total number of fifty (50) pre-primary schools in Otukpo Education Zone Benue State. The procedure adopted in selecting the sample of the research was through multi-stage sampling technique. Purposive sampling technique was used to select three (3) local government areas from five (5) local government areas that made up of Otukpo Education Zone; these include Apa, Obi and Otukpo L.G.A. Random Sampling technique was used to select thirty (30) schools from urban and twenty (20) schools from rural area of Otukpo Education Zone giving total number of 50 pre-primary schools. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire titled teachers’ perception of influence of play on pre-primary school children’s development. The instrument was developed by the researcher along line with the research purposes. The instrument was divided into two (2) sections, section A contained personal data of the respondents while section B contained the main instrument of forty (40) items grouped into four (4) clusters, and the instrument was structured in a 4 point rating scate of strongly Agree SA-4 point, Agree (A) 3 points disagree (D) 2 points and Strongly Disagree (SD) 1 point. The instrument was subjected to face validation by two (2) expert in childhood Education and one (1) experts in Measurement and Evaluation all in the faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Twenty (20) copies of the instrument were administered on twenty (20) teachers selected outside the study area. The responses of the twenty (20) teachers were subjected to crombach alpha statistic for internal reliability. The internal consistency showed the reliability coefficient of 0.73 for cluster A, cluster B had 0.67, cluster C had 0.78 and cluster D had 0.76 respectively. The overall reliability coefficient is 0.88. Direct delivery method was adopted in the administration and collection of the instrument, 315 copies of the structured questionnaire. Mean and standard deviation (SD) was used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses was tested using t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The benchmark for the data analysis was 2.55 and above was accepted while the mean score below 2.55 was not accepted. The study had implication for teachers, caregivers, proprietors’ counselors, social workers curriculum planners, policy makers and ministry of education. Recommendations were made, suggestions for further studies were made and the study had some limitations.
