The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of nature-friendly education activities on the prosocial behavior of preschoolers in inclusive early childhood education institutions for the nondisabled and disabled, and to discuss the importance o...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of nature-friendly education activities on the prosocial behavior of preschoolers in inclusive early childhood education institutions for the nondisabled and disabled, and to discuss the importance of nature-friendly education.
The subjects in this study were 46 preschoolers in public inclusive daycare centers for the nondisabled and disabled in Seoul who were at the age of 5 in Western age. Out of them, 23 young children were engaged in nature-friendly education activities at J daycare center, and the others participated in typical education programs at D daycare center. The former was selected as an experimental group, and the latter was chosen as a control group.
The instrument used to look for changes in their prosocial behavior was Lee Hye-jue(1996)'s questionnaire that translated and modified Weir & Duveen(1981)'s Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire(PBQ) and Doescher (1986)'s Modified Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire(Mod-PBQ) to suit Korean culture. That questionnaire was modified by replacing 'making others feel comfortable' with 'conceding' to serve the purpose of this study after having a discussion with this researcher's main professor.
The collected data were analyzed with SPSS(Statistical Package for the Social Science) Win 11.5 program. To find out the impact of nature- friendly education on the prosocial behavior of the preschoolers in the inclusive daycare center, t-test was utilized.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, the experimental group that received nature-friendly education showed a much better improvement in prosocial behavior than the control group that didn't. When their prosocial behavior was tested in terms of helping, sharing, cooperating and conceding, the experimental group that was exposed to nature-friendly education got to be better prosocial, and the intragroup gap between the pretest and posttest scores was significant. In contrast, the young children in the control group remained similar, made a little progress or underwent no change.
Second, as a result of rating their prosocial behavior in nature-friendly education process by using a checklist, nature-friendly education turned out to have an impact on improving the prosocial behavior of the preschoolers in the inclusive daycare center.
Therefore it's concluded that the nature-friendly education activities are one of effective programs that could bolster the prosocial behavior of young children, and that the education is one of efficient approaches to that. To boost the prosocial behavior of young children, inclusive early childhood education institutions should provide nature-friendly education.
Given the findings of the study, there are some suggestions about future research:
First, it's attempted in this study to investigate the effect of the educational activities on different groups, and possible variables that might be bound up with the equivalence of the groups weren't taken into account. In the future, how the educational activities affects equivalent groups should be studied.
Second, this study was conducted just on a short-term basis, and more specific and long-term follow-up research is required.
Third, just four elements of prosocial behavior that involved helping, sharing, cooperating and conceding were checked in this study, and more extensive research should be implemented to see if this approach has any effect on other parts of prosocial behavior.
Fourth, in order to ensure the successful application of nature-friendly education activities, teachers should be nature-friendly first of all, and teacher education should be offered. A wide variety of teacher education programs should be prepared.
Fifth, only the preschoolers from public inclusive daycare centers in Seoul were investigated in this study, and the findings of the study might not be generalizable.
Sixth, this study catered to single-age groups of five in Western age, and what results this approach may produce in multiage groups should be explored.