Pre-service early childhood teachers’ perceptions of their playfulness and inquisitiveness

Recognizing one’s own playfulness is important for early childhood education (ECE) teachers, who are responsible organizing and implementing child-initiated pedagogy in ECE centers. Playfulness research has focused on children’s play workplaces, but as a part of teachers’ pedagogical adaptive expertise rarely studied. Using multiple innovativeness instruments, first- third-year pre-service ( n = 208) self-reported inquisitiveness was examined. Correlation coefficients Student t-tests were performed to examine the connections between playfulness, facets inquisitiveness, also teachers. The results study show that connected. although there no statistically significant differences among they had different orientations towards playfulness. Additional needed explore how in-service teachers can learn their expertise. implementable designing, developing evaluating teacher education.