Relationship of physical environment of public preschool classroom on children’s social interaction behaviour and spatial choice / Mansor Othman

摘要

A strong emphasis is put on preschool education programme by theudMalaysian Ministry of Education (MOE). However, it leans more towardsudthe non-physical rather than the physical aspects of preschools. There is audscarcity of local reference on children’s environment-behaviour studies,udnotably on the physical environment of preschool classroom and spatialudbehaviour. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate this relationship.udThe objectives of this study were to identify the current state of theudphysical environment of public preschool classrooms (through the teachers’udperceptions) and to establish the types of social interaction behaviourudthat the children engaged in (during free play) in their classrooms asudlocated both in urban and non-urban areas. Their spatial choices wereudalso observed. The preschool classrooms were spatially categorised intoudhighly, moderately and poorly defined through the experts’ opinionsudsurvey. This study used the mixed method approach of questionnaireudsurveys and unobtrusive, non-participating observation and behaviouraludmapping methods. The questionnaire was adopted from Moore’s (1994,ud2008) Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale (CPERS) which wasudadministered to 330 preschool teachers who attended a series of MOEudworkshops. The observations found that there exists five types of socialudinteraction behaviour and spatial choices that 494 children aged 5 to 6udyears old engaged in during free-play periods in their classrooms in 20udpublic urban and non-urban preschools in the state of Selangor. The spatialdefinitionudof classrooms in both locations was acquired through a directlyuddistributed questionnaire survey to 40 interior architects...