ABSTRACT

This study explores the influence of play materials on the development of social skills among primary school pupils in the Buea Municipality. The research adopts a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, including observation and interviews with teachers and pupils. The study finds that play materials play a significant role in the development of social skills among primary school pupils, including communication, cooperation, empathy, and emotional regulation. The availability of a variety of play materials, such as blocks, puzzles, and board games, supports the development of social skills by providing opportunities for pupils to interact with one another, negotiate, and solve problems collaboratively. Additionally, the study reveals that teachers play a crucial role in facilitating the use of play materials to promote social skills development. The study recommends that schools provide a range of play materials and encourage their use to support the social skills development of primary school pupils in the Buea Municipality

In summary, the availability and appropriate use of play materials can have a significant impact on the development of social skills among primary school pupils in the Buea Municipality. Teachers and schools should provide a range of play materials that are well-suited to children’s developmental levels and interests, and actively encourage their use as a means of promoting social skills development. By doing so, they can help children build the social competencies they need to succeed both in and out of school.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Social skills according to J. Chadsey-Rusch (1992) was defined as a learnt, goal oriented, and societal norms, guides behavior which depends on a specific situation and happens in a social context. Social skills build essential character traits like trustworthiness, respectfulness, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. These traits help build an internal moral compass, allowing individuals to make good choices in thinking and behavior, resulting in social competence. The importance of social skills to children is that they are able to Recognize or understand others point of view, Anger management, Social problem solving, Peer negotiation, Conflict management, Peer resistance skills, Active listening and Effective communication. More so, challenges children face during the development of social skills can be difficulties in making new friends, been bullied by peers or excluded by the peers, refusing to play with other children, always isolated, Cannot listen to others or take the ideas of their friends during play and many other challenges. Moreover, Consequences of having poor social skills are peer rejection, Depression, anxiety, aggressive behaviors, some can even demonstrate poor academic performance to name a few. Many factors can influence the development of social skills such as The environment , Parenting styles, peers, the media and others but this study will look at how one of the factors which is play materials influence the development of social skills. Play materials are equipment’s that assist in developing large motor skills such as balance, coordination, running, climbing and jumping. As result of this, this study wants to investigate how much play materials such as swings, merry-go-rounds, playgrounds influence the acquisition of social skills in pupils. To achieve this, this chapter was structured into Background to the study, statement of problem, research objectives, research questions, research hypothesis, justification of study, and significance of study, scope/delimitation of the study and Operational definition of terms.

Background to the study

Background to the study is one of the first steps you take in carrying out a research. It gives you detailed information about the concepts to be explained. The background to the study will be arranged According to the Historical, Conceptual, Contextual and theoretical background

Historically, The study of social skills began in the early 20th century with research into how children interact with their peers and function in social situations In the 1930s, researchers began investigating peer groups and how children’s characteristics affected their positions within these peer groups. In the 1950s and 1960s, research established that children’s social skills was related to future mental health (such as maladaptive outcomes in adulthood), as well as problems in school settings In an effort to determine the reason for some children’s lack of social skills in certain interactions, researchers developed social information processing models to explain the dynamics of social interaction. A prominent researcher of social competence in the mid-1980s was Frank Gresham. He identified three sub-domains of social competence: adaptive behavior, social skills, and peer acceptance. Also, since the 19 century, education has observed the transition from play to learning as children smuggle to leave the world of play at home and enter the world of learning at school. The idea that play could be used as a tool of teaching and curricular was first put into practice by Pestalozzi (1827), who believed that young children could be educated to developed an inquiring approach to things and words. Froebel 1782-1827 believed that relationships and interaction using play materials develops intelligence, character and harmony among children. He allowed children to use wooden balls and gifts and this enhanced social learning. According to Kamen (2005) relationships and interactions between primary school children and play materials enhances warmth and friendliness and it also helps to develop positive behaviors, social skills and communication among pupils. The development of modern approaches to social skills training dates to the 1970s (McFall & Twentyman, 1973). Initially, research was carried out using discrete behaviors considered to be components of appropriate assertiveness training. These early papers largely focused on typically developing adults (McFall & Lillesaud, 1971). These efforts helped to establish a methodology for training and to demonstrate the efficacy of learning-based methods to improve these skills.

Conceptually some social skills are problem solving skills, communication skills, interactive skills, leadership skills, sharing abilities, cooperation, empathy and many more. social skills as the level or degree of personality, whereby a person demonstrates personal social knowledge and ability to manage social interaction (Hogan, Shelton, 1998); social skills are linked to a person’s ability to initiate interactions, as well as an adequate response to other’s behavior (Gresham, 2002). S. Cavell (1990) argue that social skills (such as overt behavior skills, social cognitive skills; emotional regulation skills, etc.) enable behavior which meets social expectations (standards of behavior). According to Sutton Smith ‘Play is a spontaneous, voluntary, pleasurable and flexible activity involving a combination of body, object, symbol use and relationships (2013, p.2) Play materials are equipment’s used in developing large motor skills  such as balance ,Climbing, running and many others. Play materials are categorized into two groups; indoor play materials and outdoor plays materials. Under indoor play materials are counters, toys, dolls, shapes of wood of all sizes, san papers, pencils, crayons, magnets, plastics, and puzzles, measuring spoons, charts, picture, tables, shelves, mates and face clocks. The outdoor play materials are swings, merry-go-round, climbers/ladders, slides, tunnels, tyres, sand box, balls clay, water through and bath. In a study by Lieberman (1977), playfulness in kindergartners was found to correlate with higher scores in divergent thinking. Through play, children use divergent thinking to research solutions to the problem. The play has been recognized as the highest form of research Caplan and Caplan, (974). Play provides many opportunities for children to create, invent, and design as they build, draw, and dramatize. Dansky and Silvennan (1973 & 1975) conducted experimental studies and found a causal relationship between play and creativity. Creativity is considered the highest form of problem-solving. Play encourages problem-solving through discovery. Bruner (1972) found that play enhanced children’s ability to solve problems by increasing their behavioural options. In fact, several studies have found that play encourages children’s problem-solving abilities, (Simon & Simon, l953).

Contextually today’s world is constantly changing from shifting career and political landscapes to increasingly digital economies and social life. play has not always been welcome in classroom settings, but in recent years as more studies have come out, people are starting to realize the importance of play (sarach and spodeck, 1995) New technologies have come that children need to live in and adapt and try to create opportunities to themselves and their communities (Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek 2008) Looking at our Cameroonian context, children are seen playing through creative and uncreative play. Children create their own knowledge. They used papers to build things like airplanes, cars, ships and use small bricks to build houses and also used tins of tomatoes to cook inside while the girls assume the role of the mother and daughter respectively the boys take the role of the father and son as well. Play gives children the opportunity to unlock their creativity and imagination and develop reading, mathematical skills and cognitive abilities, and also develop their fine and gross motor skills. The united nation high commissioner for the human right (UNHCHR, 2016) recognized play as the right for every child and its importance in his/her development. Unlike before, playgrounds and play materials were not seen as a necessity in primary schools in Cameroon. But from about 2010 till date most schools have seen the essence of play materials and its importance to children’s development. Moreover, Social skills in the Cameroonian Context lays more emphasis on children’s ability to interact with one another because interacting will help them develop(problem solving skills, sharing skills, emotional skills and many others). Children who lack this social skills find it difficult to even communicate with one another, solve problems among themselves, keep friends and even the ability to relate with their teachers are not there that is why In the Buea municipality of we face problems such as violence in school, bullying, fighting, disrespect, children being aggressive towards their friends and some even turn to fight their teachers and many others put up deviant behaviors some start engaging with bad friends, taking hard drugs ,skipping classes and even threaten the elderly this is as a result to lack of social skills . To conclude this study will introduce how play materials been introduced to children at the primary level will serve as one method to improve the acquisition of skills.

Theoretically, this study will look at some theorist views and their theories on social learning such as Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory, Albert Banduras social learning theory, Lev Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory and The Ecological systems theory by Urie Bronfenbrenner. To begin, Erik Erickson’s (1968) Theory of psychosocial development proposed 8 developmental stages which was either characterized by a crisis or conflict, and each conflict contains the possibility of bipolar outcomes. This outcomes will determine the cause of future personality. In this study the stage to be examined is Industry versus Inferiority from about age 5 to 12years. At this stage children develop and learn skills and associate with society. Children who are productive feel good about their selves and those who are unable to meet up feel inferior. At this stage children also learn to meet the demands imposed by school responsibilities. More so , Albert Bandura’s (1977)Social Learning Theory

Bandura (1977) wrote extensively on the role of models in children’s social-cognitive development. The major idea of this theory is that children learn by observing others. He emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling behaviors, attitudes and emotional reactions of others. It has been applied extensively to the understanding of aggression. According to Bandura, the modeling process includes several steps such as Attention, Retention, Reproduction and Motivation. This will be examined detail in the Theoretical Review. Furthermore, Lev Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning Theory views human development as a socially mediated process in which children acquire their cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society. Vygotsky’s theory is comprised of concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the Zone of Proximal Development. Lastly, Ecological systems theory of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979) is one of the most accepted explanations regarding to the influence of social environment on human development. Urie’s ecological systems theory proposed that human development unfolds in a nested set of systems involving cultural social economic and political elements. These systems and their interactions can nurture or stifle optimal development. He spoke about four systems which is the Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem and Chronosystem

Statement of problem

 Most primary school pupils exhibit unacceptable internalized and externalized behaviors such as aggression, defiance, non-compliance, disobedience, fighting, greed, bullying, using abusive words on each other, pushing and tantrum. These behaviors exhibited by pupils at this if not given adequate attention, they can grow up to become harden in heart which lead them into cultism, smoking, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, stealing, kidnapping, pre-marital sex and waywardness. The high rate of antisocial behavior among primary school pupils makes it pertinent to carry out a research on play materials availability, utilization and social skills development of the primary school pupils.

Research Objectives

The objectives of this study were broken down into main and specific research

General objectives

Generally this study aims to:

To find out how play materials influence the development of social skills among primary school pupils in Buea subdivision

Specific Objectives

Specifically this study seeks to:

• To investigate the extent to which a merry-go-round will help to develop leadership skills among primary school pupils in Buea Subdivision
• To find out how swings help to develop communication skills among primary school children in Buea Subdivision
• To find out how playgrounds help to develop problem solving skills among primary schools children in Buea Subdivision

Research Question

The research objectives were transformed to research questions and broken down into the general and specific research questions.

General Research Question

 What Impact does play materials have on the development of social skills among primary school pupils in Buea Subdivision

Specific Research Question

Specifically this study seeks to answer the following questions:

• What impact does the merry-go-round have on the development of social skills among primary school pupils in Buea subdivision?
• How do swings influence the development of social skills among primary school pupils in Buea Subdivision?

To what extend do playgrounds contribute to development of social skills among primary school pupils in Buea subdivision?