have worked as a teacher for a while at a child care center that advocated play as a curriculum. At that time, I tried to make educational activities become play, not class. As a constructivist teacher of a childcare center advocating play-centered program, I wanted to be a friend to the children getting along well with them. However, after an activity had been finished, children came to me and asked like this: "Teacher, can I go and play now?" No matter how hard I prepared an activity as play, it did not seem that they regarded it as "play". To the children I felt that I was just a teacher, not a playmate. Why? Why could not I be a playmate of children? What is the role of a teacher in play? This question not only concerns the relationship between children and teacher, but also is relevant to understanding children's play. Further, characteristics of play are deeply related to the player's role, teacher's role constructs the characteristics of play. Thus, to understand play at childcare center, we need to look into teacher's role in play.

Studies on teacher's role in play have mainly analyzed the relationship between teacher and children in free play. Many of them focused on teacher's interaction with children to help them in play (Ashiabi, 2007;Fumoto, 2011;Lobman, 2006;Jones, 2013;Park, 2007; Stanton-Chapman & Hadden, 2011; Widger & Schofield, 2012). For example, Lobman (2006) demonstrated that teachers' interaction encouraged the enjoyment of children and extended their play, focusing on the improvisational characteristics of play. Also, Widger and Schofield (2012) showed teachers' interaction in play through teacher's viewpoint from three approaches based on child-centered philosophy. Moreover, Fumoto (2011) and Stanton-Chapman and Hadden (2011) considered how teachers extend the play by interacting in children's play, and help them actively participate in play. Play participation and interaction of teacher is one of the highly emphasized roles in play-based curriculum . These studies demonstrate that play participation and interaction of teacher serves a positive and important role that help children. However, according to some studies, frequent play interaction and participation of teacher could restrict freedom and enjoyment of children's play (Farne, 2005; Holt, Lee, Millar, & Spence, 2013; Jeon, 2013). Jeon (2013) showed that teacher's participation in play simplifies the play by leading it toward the way that the teacher wants. Also, Farne (2005) mentioned that real play of children takes place where there is no attention of adults, like street. Therefore, the positive aspect of teacher's interaction needs to be examined, comparing with the viewpoints in these studies.

On the other hand, some studies focused on control and supervision of teacher during play (Jones, 2013;Leavitt, 1994;Wing, 1995). These studies showed how teachers restrict freedom of children, and make adult-centered order and time rules internalized in the children in play scenes. In addition, these studies show how use of items is formalized, and how the body system of children is adapted to school by teacher's control of time and space (Leavitt, 1994). Such control and training also occurs in play. Teachers control formalization of space and time of play as well as the use of toys (Leavitt, 1994;Jones, 2013). These studies give a new angle on the teacher's participation in play that has been emphasized as a positive aspect in playbased curriculum so far. At the same time, they emphasize children's objectivity as a being under control, by focusing on teacher's doing to the children. However, children are not only the being in the world reacting to teacher's doing, but also interactive subject making another possibility in limits of the world (Heidegger, 1927;Jeon, 2013;Yin, 2013;van Manen, 2012). Therefore, when we consider the role of a teacher in play, we should explore children's viewpoints about teacher's role as a subject of relation. Thus, we need to understand viewpoints of children, putting down our pre-understanding and viewpoints as a teacher and an adult.

In this context, Samuelsson and Johansson (2009)'s study helps us to understand children's viewpoint by demonstrating why children invite teachers to their play. Children wanted to invite teacher when they needed help from teacher, broke the rules, or needed information. However, children did not ask teachers for help, nor they invited them to play if possible, because playfulness of teachers did not come up to the children's, and sometimes they even interrupted children's play (Samuelsson & Johansson, 2009). Also, teachers did not want to jump into interaction in children's play. These researchers thought that it is because teachers have different playfulness with children's and because teachers themselves are afraid of interrupting children's play. These findings cast doubt upon the importance of teacher's play intervention and participation, which has been supposed by most theories of play from a developmental perspective . Also, the researchers conjectured that children in their study regarded teacher's main role as an assistant who helps their play. However, do Korean children have the same conceptions as children in the European culture? How do children think about teacher's role in play at childcare centers? What do teachers think their main role is? What viewpoints do teachers and children have about teacher's role in play? If their thoughts are discrepant, how should we understand it? What meaning is hidden in that difference?

To answer the questions above, the present study explored the viewpoints of the teacher and the child regarding teacher's role in play by using participant observation and interview at a child care center in Korea. Especially, to understand play in child care center and children's viewpoint to teacher's role, I tried to deconstruct my pre-understanding and see the phenomenon as it is as I could.

This study used phenomenological qualitative inquiry to understand the viewpoints of the children and the teachers about teacher's role in play. Phenomenological qualitative inquiry does not find the truth as fixed substance, but seeks truthfulness (Gadamer, 2000;Jeon, 2013). This study also tried to understand the teacher's role at play in eyes of children and teachers, that is, in emic viewpoint of participant, rather than paid attention to previous discussion on teacher's role in play.

The field in this study was five-year-old children's class, Pooreun, in Cday care center that had play-centered curriculum, located in Seoul downtown. I visited the center once or twice a week, and did participant observation in free playtime for about 10 months. Cday care center is a workplace child care facility, placed in the company building, and can accommodate 100 children. It has a one-year curriculum, consisting of a series of play themes. In a year, there are 12 broad themes, each of which has four sub-themes. Teachers plan play on a weekly and monthly basis according to 'play-centered curriculum' theme of the day care center. Every week, two teachers alternate their roles, one as a "head teacher"(main teacher), leading their planned activities, and the other as an assistant. While the main teacher constructs main play of the week and leads it, the other teacher assists the main teacher.

The participants were children and two teachers (Teacher, Han and Teacher, Jung) of class Pooreun. Prior to the study, I visited the classroom to explain the study to teachers and ask for agreement to participate in the study. Also, written, informed consent was obtained from parents of 14 children, which were all children in class Pooreun.

The present study gathered various kinds of data in order to avoid unbalanced understanding of the phenomenon due to one kind of data collection in qualitative research (Jo, 2011;Wolcott, 1994). The data collected for this study were three types: Participant observation data on free play time, data from interview with children and teachers, and journal offered by teachers. The contents of concrete data for each method of data collection are shown in Table 1. First, basic coding was performed for all collected data, mainly with things related to the subject of this study, using emic coding. Emic coding refers to sorting the data through the viewpoint of a participant in it, in his or her own words, to make data tell the story by itself as much as it can. Emic coding was followed by structural coding, which is to find the possible answer to research problems and structuralize data (Saldana, 2009). Based on this structural coding, I categorized similar concept and mean shown on data, and relation of subjects inductively by logical relation.

Every time I went into the class, Pooreun, for observation, I had to look for teachers many times because they were mingled with children playing. For example, teacher Han often made scripts and items with children for pretend play, or watched pretend play. Teacher Jung often played a role herself in pretend play. Especially, because there were many pretend plays, the teachers often used to play a role in the play, and toss around with the children. When they invited other class children as an audience to their pretend play, teacher's role seemed to become more obvious. After pretend play, teachers were excited and proud of it, talking about their feelings with the children, as often seen among friends. Sometimes, opinions between children and teachers on making pretend plays were divided. In those cases, children did not seem to care about teachers' opinions but rather often insisted their own opinions strongly. They also pointed out teachers' mistakes. These observations together made me think as if they treated their teacher as their friends. In the earlier semester, when the play theme was <Day care center>, one child and Teacher Han almost fought while they were discussing how to decorate the toddler class due to their different opinions. The happening ended after they went to the toddler class together and checked the real interior of the classroom. In this context, teachers appeared to think that their relationship with children was "a playmate" in free play. They thought them selves as friends of children during play, whom served a part in the play at the same level as children, rather than instructed or controlled them. Teachers' perception about teacher's role in free play is shown in the following interview.

Teacher As can be seen above, the teachers perceived their main role as "a playmate" in free playtime, and they said, they want to believe it like that." They were proud of the fact that they work at a play-based day care center, and gave it an important meaning. Teachers Han and Jung thought that playing with children in free playtime was the most important than any other work. They thought that a teacher should be a "playmate" who could accept and extend "free" play of children in a play-based day care center. They did not do any instruction to children or control them, but rather they were just play-participants continuously interacting with children. This pattern of teacher participation is highly distinct from that of teachers in ordinary day care centers in Korea, who participate in children's play only when children ask for it or when there is a conflict or a problem among children. Therefore, watching these teachers perceiving themselves as "a playmate" of children, I also thought that the teachers were friends of children. It seemed that the ideal role of teachers in play that a play-based curriculum seeks for was perfectly fulfilled in this class. While the teachers aimed to serve as a playmate in free play of classroom as above, however, children had different thoughts.

Children While interviewing children and analyzing it later, I found a new viewpoint. Won-Ji said that teacher liked "treating" her "like a friend". According to Won-Ji's expression, teacher is a person, "not play together with, but just play with" her. They are sometimes a friend and sometimes are not, "half to half". It means that teachers are "like a friend", but eventually they are not a friend! At the first of this interview, I did not think the meaning of her saying deeply and I thought children regard teacher as their playmate. I ignored subtle difference of "like~" in her saying. And then, throughout analyzing data again, I found that she was obviously saying "not a friend", though "like a friend". After being aware of children's viewpoints through that subtle difference, I could see the children's viewpoint like these in others interview. The children telling that their teachers were like a friend, but not a friend, although each had a different reason.

"I like that the teacher treat us like friends" "Play with me (not continuously but when I need her) sometimes" "Because she doesn't talk kindly (she is not a friend), although she played with me" "Teacher is not a friend, although she plays with me" "Because teacher is older than me, she is not a friend." "Can talk with her, but cannot play with her" "Not a friend, but like mom and dad, taking care of me?"

To the children, their teachers were "listening to what they said carefully", "playing with them" and "like a friend". But they were not "a friend". I looked back that my understanding of teacher's role and meaning in play was highly teacher-centered viewpoint, through finding the children's. Children's viewpoints like these, about role of teacher in free play, show more clearly through teacher's role called "play planner" as follows.

b) Same viewpoints: "leading to the goal" and "planning the play" i. Teacher: "helping to approach the goal by free play"

While doing participant observation over and over, the characteristic of play I found first in class Pooreun was that children played as a group mostly. After snack time, even the children who had played alone or in a small group, played the same things after 10 minutes. At the beginning of the observation, it seemed that this phenomenon was natural. However, with observing over and over, I found that children repeated the same pretend play form only with different theme. While in free playtime of five-year-old classroom in the other day care center, observed during the same period, various play forms were observed, such as a game of slap-match, dinosaur fighting, flicking go stone, car racing, fighting with guns, playing the restaurant, play like police, play a comedy, making a flower garden, and making an airplane, etc. Butthe Pooreun's play almost ended in the same form, group pretend play, whether any theme had been played. And this theme was fixed as a play theme of this week, among the annual play theme, decided by the play-centered curriculum in A day care center. All the annual theme of five-years class in A day care center are "Class and Friend", "Spring and Animals and Plants", "Me and Family", "Machine and Life", "My country", and "The Earth and Environment", etc. That is setting educational goal related to the themes, and helping to realize in play.

Teacher Jung: I think the role of teacher is?first, teacher does not insist their opinion, but there is a setting goal through this play, mainly, so they should not forget that educational goal. That is, the role that helps to approach to the goal closely by children's play is important to teacher. Maybe play fun with them, rather than help. But it is important that teacher shouldn't forget the point, the point of the play.

Teachers said that, although there is a theme of play and a goal of the play, this goal does not apply to every child alike, and because it is not something that children "have to know" or "have to study" but rather something that children are "experiencing and feeling", it is different from learning. As teachers' said, if the play of Pooreun is "the play as a experiencing and feeling", why should the theme of play be set? Could such play whose goal is pre-determined, be free play? In fact, during the 10 months observation in Pooreun, I saw conflict between theme play that teachers had prepared, and not-theme-related play by children.

Researcher As conflictive experience increased between play theme set by curriculum and play created by children, teacher was concerned about the freedom of play. While teachers prepared a play according to the pre-determined play theme and led children to goal, they wanted to be 'a playmate' at the same time. However, do children consider a teacher as a friend, perceiving leading children to "the goal" as their important role while playing? Eventually, teacher's role of "leading to goal" based on the play-centered curriculum made irony that standardized and regularized play of them.

ii. Children: "After teacher planned, we played"

The participating children also had the same thoughts about teacher's role that the teachers told "leading to the goal." There were two especially notable things while transcribing the content of interview and participant observation about free play of the class,: First, most of the play occurred in the classroom was pretend play; Second, children used the word "plan" very much about teacher's role. The play that could be seen frequently in Pooreun was mostly 'making script', 'making items for pretend play', 'deciding a role in pretend play', 'decorating the stage and making seats for audience', 'making invitation cards and tickets', 'play the pretend play', etc. And in the center of directing and doing this pretend play, there was teacher Jung. What Jung said most frequently during the free playtime, was "Please come here anyone who want to do pretend play~" and "Who want to take this role?" and so on. Such pretend play is the play form that can show the play theme of play-centered curriculum of A child care center most dramatically. In interview with children, they used the word "plan" most frequently when they had a talk related to teacher's role in free play. To the question of the researcher 'How do you play with teacher in free playtime?', participating children provided answers such as the followings.

"After teacher planned, we played" "After teacher told about planned play, (we played.)" "After teacher made plan, we did it with our ideas" "Teacher sometimes planned and sometimes played with, many times they played with us and helped us." "In play teacher planned she played with us."

As seen in the above, most of the children talked teacher's role relating with play plan. Children of Pooreun perceived obviously of that, the role of teacher in free play was play planner. Even to the question "In free playtime do you play in the way you want?", most of the children answered "After teacher planned, we played." And this plan is given already according to 'the play theme' of A day care center advocating playcentered curriculum. Given play theme of play-centered curriculum and "a goal" of the teachers made teachers of class Pooreun, play planner and director, and made children, executor or consumer (Jeon, 2013).

Children and teachers had similar thoughts about teacher's role as the play planner. However, while teachers thought that their most important role was a playmate participating in children's play, children considered teachers as someone "like a friend" but not "a friend." What forms this gap? What meaning is hidden between "a friend" and "like a friend"? i. Perception about difference: "Because teacher is an adult and I'm a child" As the reason why they didn't think the teacher as a friend, children frequently mentioned a "difference" between teachers and children. Those differences can be divided largely into physical differences and nonphysical differences. As for the physical differences, children referred to biological age ("Because age is different?"), and body ("Because teacher is tall, I'm small"). For the non-physical differences, they mentioned differences in cognitive abilities ("Because I don't do it well, but teacher thinks all of it."), roles ("Because teacher takes care of us."), and power ("Because teacher doesn't do kindly"). The child who answered "because teacher doesn't do kindly" referred that in conflictive situations with friends in free play, teacher often talked in the other friend's side. Such answer shows that the child perceives difference in power between teacher and him in play. Teachers regarded themselves as "a playmate" of children who "just has the title, teacher", but children perceived that there still exists not only physical difference but also difference in power.

ii. Play, not as enjoyment but as taking care of: "doesn't play together, but offered us with play" One remarkably repeated phrase in children's description of play with teacher was that teachers "offered us with play." Children used the expression "Teacher offered us with play" rather than "we played together with teacher." What is the difference between 'offer play' and 'play together'? At first, I overlooked this difference, but the expression caught me as I reviewed the interview with children. I found that children's viewpoint was hidden there. That was interpretation about play motivation of teachers. Children thought that teachers were not "playing together with" them but "offering play" to them. "Playing together" is playing with one's own pleasure, but "offering play to" is participating in play to fulfill a duty to the other. Children thought that teacher was playing with them to take care of them, not for their own pleasure. This viewpoint is clearly shown in the interview with Eun-Mi.

Researcher At the beginning of the interview, Eun-mi said "Because teacher is an adult and I'm a child" as the reason why teachers were not friends. However, at the end of the interview, Eun-mi said, without any hesitation, that the researcher could be her friend "because (she) keeps playing together" despite the fact that the researcher was an adult. Thus, eventually, to Eun-Mi, the main criteria in determining whether or not one is a friend in play, was beyond the differences between adult and child.

iii. School type play: "It doesn't seem like free play" Another reason why children did not view the teacher as a playmate despite the effort from teacher to be a friend was the characteristics of free play. In most cases, play in free playtime of class Pooreun occurred was not children's spontaneous play. Rather, it was based on teacher's careful planning according to the pre-determined play theme. The play themes were set for week, month and year, so they were like "curriculum of play." This seems close to school type play, rather than free play. Teachers perceived this, too.

Researcher: Teachers prepare play carefully in this day care center. What do you think about that? Teacher Han: ?In that sense, it may not be free play? (omitted)? But in our class, children can choose their play within the theme that teacher prepares.

The most surprising finding in participant observation of class Pooreun was that in almost every free playtime, 10 or more out of 14 children did pretend play of the same theme together. At first glance, play of class Pooreun seemed various, but the over all theme was pre-determined, and the process of progressing children's play was mostly fixed as follows.

Teachers' planning of play based on the theme? Teacher's explanation about the theme and play items? Children's exploratory play in each play corner (e.g., building blocks, reading books)? Finding pretend play items? Making stage, background, script, and items, etc. ? Doing pretend play.

It revealed that children's play form was not various although the play themes varied according to the annual theme. This was because free playtime of Pooreun is school type play according to a fixed curriculum. Consequently, in such situation, children did not think their teachers, who plan and prepare school type play, as "a friend."

IV.

The present study was conducted to understand the viewpoints of teachers and children to the role of a teacher in free play at a play-centered daycare center, and to understand the meaning of the difference. Below, I discuss the current findings in relation to previous studies, and provide suggestions for follow-up research and the field of early childhood education.

First, the teachers considered themselves as children's friends, where as children viewed the teachers as figures who were not friends but "like friends", indicating a difference in viewpoints between teachers and children to the teachers' role in free play. Such discrepancy in view points might be because children and teachers define a "playmate" differently, which eventually relates to the interpretation of play. Perhaps, playing for something (educational goal in teacher's side) was not play to children. Several previous studies (Farne, 2005; Holt, Lee, Millar, & Spence, 2013; Jeon, 2013) showed that teacher's frequent participation at play could damage the enjoyment of play of children. Such findings suggest that interaction in teacher's side could be interruption to children in free play (Widger & Schofield, 2012). The difference of viewpoints between teacher and child reminds of Thomson and Philo's (2004) point that we are still looking at children's play by value of adults and eyes of the necessity.

Second, in play-centered childcare, teachers perceived their main role in free play as leading children to the educational goal through play, and children also viewed that planning play was the main role of teacher. This finding is consistent with traditional play-based curriculum seeing children's play as a key to the curriculum in the field of early childhood education (Cannella, 1997;King, 1982;Wing, 1995). The majority of play-centered childcare centers try to achieve educational goal and proceed children's educational activity by play (Hoorn, Nourot, Scales, & Alward, 2011; Yeu, 2004). Such result is slightly different from those studies (Ashiabi, 2007;Fumoto, 2011;Lobman, 2006;Park, 2007;Stanton-Chapman & Hadden, 2011) that view the role of a teacher in play is to increase interaction and improve the relation between children. Follow-up research needs to further explore these two different aspects of interaction.

Third, as a reason why teachers were not their friends, children perceived differences between teachers and themselves in both physical aspects such as age and body size, and non-physical aspects such as cognitive abilities, decision authority, and power. Possibly, such perception of differences made children consider teacher's interaction in a play as an instruction, rather than a conversation or discussion that usually happens among friends to solve conflicts or to compromise. Although teachers thought that they put down their power and had an equal status as the children during play, children were still prone to remark the differences (Jeon, 2013, Yin, 2013). This finding suggests that teacher's interaction in play may cause inequality, albeit unintentionally does so. Thus, when teachers want to participate in play, they need to understand the viewpoints of children. However we, adults and teachers, put it down, we still have more power than children.

Fourth, not only the playing behavior but also the motive of playing may be an important component of play to children. Children expressed that teachers did not play together with them. Perhaps children recognized that teachers participated in children's play as one of the child caring work rather than playing with children together because of their own pleasure. To children, teachers who were playing as a caring duty were not "a friend" of them, suggesting children's thoughts about inner motive of play. This finding helps us better understand children's viewpoints about play and has an implication for how teachers could become a real friend of children.

Lastly, in "school" type play, a teacher cannot be a friend no matter how she or he is receptive. The teachers in this study were kind, gentle and very receptive. At the same time, because teachers regarded play as their most important curriculum, they prepared play carefully, suggested a "theme" of play to children, and were always together in that play. Consequently, regardless of how much the teachers played together with the children, children regarded the two teachers as teachers preparing educational activities according to the theme. This shows children's insight into planned and instructed play, that is, school type play. Because school type play lacks properties such as freedom and improvisation, it seems closer to educational activities than to a real "play", from children's point of view. This result suggests that we need more improvisational playfulness in day-care center, as Lobman (2006) pointed out. Similarly, Samuelsson and Johansson (2009) have suggested that educational aims of teachers make playfulness of teachers not reach to the children's. Therefore, teachers in early childhood education need to plan less play. At the same time, rather than teaching through play with children, they should be seeped naturally into improvisational, free play of children.

This study observed free playtime in a single classroom to explore viewpoints of teachers and children to the teacher's role in play in play-centered childcare. Teachers' role may vary depending on the circumstances of play as well as the individual teachers and institutions. Therefore, one limitation of this study is that the finding may not generalize to more various play scenes or other play-centered child care centers. However, this study is significant in that it tried to reveal teachers' role in children's view points through participant observation for an extended time period. Also, this study provides a ground for further questions for future studies: Is it really impossible that we, adults and teachers, become a real friend to children, not a teacher who is like a friend? Or is it unnecessary work? How can a teacher be a friend of children to make a play be more like a real play? Isn't there any teacher who is a real friend to children? If there is any, what are the characteristics of such teachers? With future research addressing these questions, we will be able to understand better the best way for us to participate in child play and children's play itself.

V.