This study examines the perception of infant and child teacher about playing through metaphor analysis.
The study subjects are 179 infant and child teacher working in kindergarten and daycare center located in
Gyeonggi and Chungcheong-do region. As for the play metaphor, the data was conducted classification of
category based on contents described through h" play is ~, because it is ~." and conducted frequency
analysis on perception type of each category. As the result, first, the infant and child teachers classified the
play metaphorically in 32 expressions, and 32 expressions are classified into 9 categories such as
experience, life, emotion, joy, autonomy, education, development, communication and exploration. Second,
the metaphoric expression about play which infant and child teacher considers are classified into individual, education and other aspect. As for the individual aspect it includes a place of experience, life of child,
emotional purification, joy, autonomy, as for the educational aspect, it includes a space of education,
developmental process and communication while the other aspects include exploration. This study is
significant in seeking a measure to improve high-quality play education and the value about play in the
field of education based on analysis of perception of play by the teachers