Testing the Value of Visualizing the “Quality of Children’s Play” ─Incorporating Network Analysis into Action Research─

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  • 「遊びの質」を可視化する─ネットワーク理論をアクションリサーチに取り入れる意義と方法─
  • 「 アソビ ノ シツ 」 オ カシカ スル : ネットワーク リロン オ アクションリサーチ ニ トリイレル イギ ト ホウホウ

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Research on the quality of children’s play has usually been conducted in the form of descriptive case studies. However, the standards used to interpret such case studies vary depending on the reader’s school of thought. This has made discussions among educators difficult, frequently preventing approaches to childcare practice from being considered. In conventional action research studies on the “quality of children’s play,” first, researchers have collected data on how children at play were responding to their environment and, second, based on those data, researchers and teachers collaboratively described the quality of the play observed. The purpose of this study was to test the addition of a third procedure in which the quality of the play described is visualized using network analysis. With this purpose in mind, network analysis was performed on two sample cases from the action research literature. In Case 1 , the quality of play was considered to be high and in Case 2 , low. Results showed that the network analysis 1 ) enabled comparison of the quality of play through visualization; 2 ) enabled comparison via the quantification of “Adjusted Density” (children’s responsiveness to their environment); and 3 ) confirmed that there were large differences between Case 1 and Case 2 , both visually and quantitatively. This suggested that incorporating network analysis into action research can generate data that can be used as a common basis for comparison in the interpretation of case studies.

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