Teacher's Readiness to Work with Children While Playing

The article deals with the problem of revealing qualities that define Russian teachers' personal readiness to work with children while playing. This problem is topical for Russia and has not been studied well enough. The traditional stereotype of a Russian teacher was connected with strictness and exactingness. Child abuse (in the form of punishment, even physically) was unofficially considered to be a norm in family education. Isolated instances of child abuse in families and day-care centres may be observed even today. Pedagogical cooperation which was formerly recognized in the 1990s tended to scare off educators over violations of pedagogical ethics and tact, often bordering on familiarity and lack of professionalism.The 2013 new pre-school education standard emphasizes the use of games as children's leading activity type. It actualized teachers' qualities such as self-consciousness, empathy, colloboration, etc. As a result of it, cognitive development of children began to take a backseat. Russian school standards and programs are not as unrestricted as those in day-care centres. That is why schools are unwilling as yet to meet day-care centres halfway; instead they set down their own requirements for pre-schools (including the level of children's cognitive development) and the latter have to adapt to them. One of the forms of such adaptation is a didactic game. The research suggests that in day-care centres a game is played under a teacher's strict control. Consequently, it loses its freedom and fails to provide self-actualization to either teacher or child. Moreover, there is a different perception of the game among representatives of different religions. For example, the population of the Volga region (Kazan) consists of Russians, Tatars, Chuvashes, Maris. These peoples' religious and national self identification is on the rise. Some of them fully approve of the games while others don't.