Psychological Influence of Play Method on the Development of Pre-School Children with and without Hearing Impairment in Ika South, Delta State, Nigeria

The purpose of the study is to determine the psychological influence of play method of teaching on the development of pre-school children with and without hearing impairment in Ika South Local Government Area of Delta State in Nigeria. Four research questions were formulated to guide the study while four hypotheses were tested. A descriptive survey was adopted in this study. The simple random sampling technique was used to select 90 teachers as sample for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire titled “Pre-school Children Development Rating Scale” (PCDRS) for children with and without hearing impairment. Face and content validation were carried out. The reliability of the instrument was done using Cronbach Alpha to give a Reliability index of 0.77. Mean, standard deviation and t-test were used for data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that: play method of teaching has high psychological influence on language skill development of children with and without hearing impairment with higher influence on hearing children and that play method has a high psychological influence on social skill development, creative skill development and problem solving skill development of both hearing children and children with hearing impairment; there is significant psychological influence of play method on language skills development of pre-school children with and without hearing impairment; the use of play method has no significant influence on the social skills, creative skills and problem solving skills development of preschool children with and without hearing impairment. Based on the findings, the study recommends that play method should be employed to teach language to all children, especially those with hearing impairment to aid language, social, creative and problem-solving skills developments at basic levels and that the pre-school classroom teachers should be trained in workshops and seminars on how to use play to teach to achieve skills development. It also recommends that pre-school classrooms should be appropriately arranged with the adequate play toys and materials that facilitates learning processes.