Beyond Learning and Teaching in Preschool Free-Play Centers in Daliat el-Carmel-Isfiya

This article describes a group of Druze preschool and kindergarten teachers from Northern Israel who participated in an in-service course in their community. The focus of the training experience was to improve the social climate of the classroom by implementing a life-world approach. Analysis of their reports shows that the children’s meaningful learning, improved emotional coping with ordinary hardships, and mutual social support are a product of intervention that involves multiple, interrelated activity channels: staff collaboration, guided small group discussions, informal discussions, cooperation with parents and community agents, and free play. Each activity channel is associated with a compatible, dominant, learning modality and a predominant interpersonal process—free play, for example, is mainly associated with free inquiry and discourse among children, whereas group activity is also likely to be associated with learning guided by educators.