Countless creative ideas are constructed while preschoolers play, and are often
reflected in their expressions and performance. Various psychological developments
can occur during such activities. Some worth mentioning are the transcendence in their
logical-cognitive, social-cognitive, and intrapersonal-affective domains, each of which is
influenced by the nature of the learning relationship between teachers and children. The
meaning of transcendence in this study is neither moral, ethical, nor religious. It is
biological, as expressed by Joseph Pearce as “the ability to rise above restriction,
incapacity, or limitation”. The transcendence results in a newfound adaptive intuitive
sensing that can be developed in both adult and children.
The purpose of this qualitative research study, based on the grounded theory
research design, was to derive the indicators of transcendence from the key informant
children between the ages of 4-6 years during authentic play in a natural setting
self-initiated by the subjects. The environment was in a school context involving both
outdoor and indoor play using Gordon Wells’ Modes of Meaning as a research
methodology. Another goal was to find out what kinds of play patterns lead children to
transcend. Furthermore, this research includes the study of the performance indicators
of the key informant teachers using Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object Interview (SOI) to
find out how differences in the teachers’ orders of mind affected ways of transcendence
in young preschoolers during their self-initiated play. This can be used to determine how
teachers, in the Thai social context, should interact with the children to maximize transcendence.