THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FREE - PLAY INSTRUCTIONAL PROCESS BASED ON INQUIRY - BASED AND BRAIN - BASED LEARNING APPROACHES TO ENHANCE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS OF YOUNG CHILDREN

Abstract

This research aimed to: 1) develop a free - play instructional process based on inquiry - based learning and brain - based learning approaches and 2) study the effects of implementing the free - play instructional process based on inquiry - based learning and brain - based learning approaches. This study employed a Research and Development methodology. The sample consisted of 40 kindergarten level 2 children under the Office of the Private Education Commission, divided into an experimental group and a control group, with 20 children in each group. The research instruments included an evaluation form for the free - play instructional process and an executive functions assessment form. Data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and t - test statistics. The findings revealed that the developed instructional process comprised five components: 1) principles 2) objectives 3) key content 4) instructional process and 5) evaluation guidelines. The instructional process comprised four stages: 1) Brain and Emotional Activation, in which learning occurs effectively when children are stimulated through curiosity and challenges that generate internal motivation and interest; 2) Collaborative Exploration, which emphasizes connecting relationships among surrounding things, progressing from familiar to more complex concepts; 3) Joyful Sharing, where learning occurs through intrinsic interest, memory retention, and the integration of prior and new experiences through surrounding points of interest; and 4) Reflection and Connection, which involves summarizing ideas and explaining reasons or situations. The results further indicated that the experimental group demonstrated significantly higher executive function scores after the intervention than before the intervention at the .05 level of statistical significance. Moreover, the posttest executive function scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group at the .05 level of statistical significance, both overall and across individual dimensions