Role of play in school-going youths: Exploring PRIDE for PLAY

URI
Citation
Chia, M. (2010). Role of play in school-going youths: Exploring PRIDE for PLAY. In M. Chia, J. Wang, G. Balasekaran, & N. Chatzisarantis (Eds.), Proceedings of the III International Conference of Physical Education and Sports Science (pp 127-131). National Institute of Education (Singapore).
Author
Chia, Michael 
Abstract
PRIDE for PLAY is a school-based intervention programme, which allows schooling youths to capitalise on their innate proclivity for play on a daily basis. Play is a fundamental antidote to a youth lifestyle that is increasingly sedentary even though many useful things are accomplished while being still. Daily play provides a much needed balance between being physically active and being physically still. The innovative programme extracts 3-5 minutes from other time-tabled subject lessons and aggregates it to form an embedded play session that is incorporated as a daily activity. The benefits of daily play include the natural development and nurturance of social-emotional learning outcomes and values inculcation such as teamwork, racial integration. negotiation. responsibility, coping with winning and losing. confidence and resilience. Pilot research data on PRIDE for PLAY show improved teacher-pupil bonding and understanding, increased concentration and less disruptive behavior in class. School academic performance was unaffected by the additional daily time spent at play. The promising success of PRIDE for PLAY was attributed to an enlightened school leadership and widespread appeal of the programme. Current research on PRIDE for PLAY is focused on buttressing the evidence-base of the merits of the school-based programme across different school contexts at the primary, secondary and junior college schooling levels in Singapore.
Date Issued
2010
Description
This paper was published in the Proceedings of the III International Conference of Physical Education and Sports Science, held in Singapore from 25 – 28 May 2010