1. Adult Playfulness: Finnish Teachers Evaluating Their Own Playfulness
- Author
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Signe Pirkko Auroora Siklander, Marjaana Kangas, and Justus Randolph
- Abstract
Teachers need playfulness when designing teaching and learning processes. Acknowledging their playfulness as a pedagogical competence is important. Playfulness as a personality trait and as a quality of activities is studied in children but less often in teachers. To explore teachers’ playfulness, we used a Finnish language version of Staempfi’s (2005) Adolescent Playfulness Scale (APS). In Staempfli’s instrument, the constructs measured are Physical Animation, Social Engagement, Mental Spontaneity, Emotional Fluidity and Humorous Perspective. The participants (N = 123) were professional teachers, retired teachers and pre-service teachers in different educational fields. A multivariate analysis was conducted on the APS subscales to examine the influence of gender and age. Educators evaluated themselves as being high in playfulness. Playfulness was mainly consistent between different age groups and females’ emotional fluidity was a bit higher than males. The study provides knowledge about teachers’ playfulness, and results have valuable implications for teacher education and teacher work.
- Published
- 2022