This study examines the extent to which school administrators use instructional supervisory approaches in enhancing implementation of structured play activities in government pre-primary schools in Longido and Monduli Districts, in Arusha Region in Tanzania. The study was guided by Clinical Supervision Model developed by Goldhammar (1969,1993). Convergent research design was used because it allowed the researcher to collect quantitative and qualitative data so as to understand the problem in detail and triangulate the collected information. The sample consisted of 268 participants who were obtained through stratified, purposive and simple random sampling techniques. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, document analysis, and lesson observation. These tools were validated using triangulation and experts in the fields of research, administration and early childhood education. Reliability was ensured using. Cronbach alpha and triangulation techniques. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively while qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings indicate the school administrators’ supervisory role on the implementation of structured play activities in pre-primary classes to be very low. Findings also show that school administrators used several approaches in supervising teaching and learning in pre-primary classes. These includes checking pre-primary teachers’ schemes of work and lesson plans, classroom observation, monitoring of pre-primary pupils’ progress and checking pre-primary pupils’ works. However, the approaches were moderately used by the school administrators. Structured play activities were also sparingly used. The study recommends that school administrators have to use instructional supervisory approaches to enhance application of the implementation of structured play activities in teaching and learning.
Keywords: Instructional Leadership, instructional supervisor approaches, school administrators, structured play activities.
