The purposes of this study were to investigate the impacts of discussion activities using anti-prejudice fairy tales on young children's pro-social behavior and perspective-taking abilities and to provide basic data about the ways to apply the results...
The purposes of this study were to investigate the impacts of discussion activities using anti-prejudice fairy tales on young children's pro-social behavior and perspective-taking abilities and to provide basic data about the ways to apply the results to the field.
For those purposes, the following research questions were set:
1. Will discussion activities using anti-prejudice fairy tales have positive influences on young children's pro-social behavior(abilities to regulate one's emotions, to form interpersonal relations, and to adapt school)?
2. Will discussion activities using anti-prejudice fairy tales have positive influences on young children's perspective-taking abilities(perspectives of others' intentions, thoughts, and emotions)?
The subjects include 40 five-year-olds that were randomly sampled out of the attendees of S kindergarten located in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. They were divided to the experiment and control group, each of which consisted of 20.
The experiment and control group had no significant differences in the pre-test results of mean age, pro-social behavior, and perspective-taking abilities and were thus assumed as the homogeneous groups.
The experiment tools include the "Skill Situation Measure" developed by E. M. Cinnis and A. P. Goldstein(1990) to measure young children's pro-social behavior and revised and translated by Lee Won-hyeong, Park Chan-ok, and Noh Yeong-hee(1992), who used it as a behavior test in their research on the development of a program to help young children develop their sociality. The other tool was the "Perspective-Taking Abilities Inventory" developed by Hudson, Forman and Brion(1982) and revised by Shin Hyeon-ok(1999).
Total 16 experiment sessions were applied both to the experiment group, which engaged in discussion activities after listening to anti-prejudice fairy tales, and the control group, which didn't participate in discussion activities after listening to anti-prejudice fairy tales. The collected data were treated with the SPSS 12.0 program, and t-test was conducted to test the differences between the two groups and compare and analyze the results.
The research findings were as follows:
First, it turned out that the children of the experiment group, which participated in discussion activities after listening to anti-prejudice fairy tales, improved their pro-social behavior more than those of the control group, which participated in no discussion activities and moved to follow-up activities after listening to anti-prejudice fairy tales. There were statistically significant differences between them in the subareas of pro-social behavior, "abilities to form interpersonal relations" and "abilities to adapt to school." The results indicate that the discussion activities after the anti-prejudice fairy tales had positive impacts on the experiment group's enhancement of pro-social behavior. But there were no significant differences between the two groups in "abilities to regulate one's emotions."
And secondly, the children of the experiment group, which took part in the discussion activities after listening to the anti-prejudice fairy tales, improved in the perspective-taking abilities more than those of the control group, which moved to the follow-up activities without participating in the discussion activities after listening to the anti-prejudice fairy tales.
The analysis results before and after the program treatment indicate that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups in the subareas of perspective-taking abilities, "perspectives of others' intentions," "perspectives of others' thoughts" and "perspectives of others' emotions." It's thus revealed that the discussion activities after listening to the anti-prejudice fairy tales had positive impacts on the children's perspective-taking abilities.
In conclusion, the children who participated in the discussion activities after listening to the anti-prejudice fairy tales improved both in pro-social behavior and perspective-taking abilities compared with those who moved to the follow-up activities without participating in the discussion activities after listening to the anti-prejudice fairy tales. Thus discussion activities using anti-prejudice fairy tales will have positive impacts on improving young children's pro-social behavior and perspective-taking abilities if they're put to active use in early childhood education.