The purpose of this study was to identify the perception of early childhood teachers about the play practice of the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum and to use it as a basic data for successful on-site settlement of "child- and play-centeredness" curriculum emphasized in the 2019 revised Nuri Curriculum. Research questions were as follows.
Research Q1. What was the early childhood teachers' perception of the play practice of the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum?
Research Q2. What was the difference according to the general background of the play practice of the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum?
This study conducted a survey of 168 early childhood teachers working in the early childhood education institutions in B city from April 13 to May 11, 2020. The questionnaire was distributed and collected through online survey, direct visit, and registered mail.
The data analysis of this study was analyzed using the SPSS 23.0 program, and the frequency analysis to find out the general characteristics of early childhood teachers and Cronbach's α coefficients were calculated to verify the reliability of the research tools, and the mean and standard deviation in descriptive statistics were calculated to examine the early childhood teacher's perception of play practice, and t-test, one-way ANOVA and Scheffé post-test were conducted to see the difference according to the general background of play practice,
The results of this study were as follows.
First, the perception of early childhood teachers about the play practice of the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum was high. This was because as much as the Nuri curriculum emphasized experience- and play- centered integrated process in five areas of the previous kindergarten curriculum and the standard curriculum, so it could be interpreted that early childhood teachers very importantly perceived and understood this content.
Second, the difference according to the general background of the play practice in the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum was found to be statistically significant because it was showed that the child care center was higher than the kindergarten according to the type of institution in all the items except for educational support plan in the play practice sub-item. The 2019 revised Nuri curriculum is a national level education and child care program that is common to kindergartens and child care centers regardless of the type of institution, but the result that the perception between kindergarten teachers and child care teachers differs by the type of institution is considered to be a meaningful result that determines the future direction of support for the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum.