The purpose of this study lies in inquiring into the effects of disaster safety education using multimedia on young children's problem solving ability regarding safety and perspective-taking ability, and seeking for a efficient way to make the mos...
The purpose of this study lies in inquiring into the effects of disaster safety education using multimedia on young children's problem solving ability regarding safety and perspective-taking ability, and seeking for a efficient way to make the most of disaster safety education in the field of early childhood education. In this respect, following two questions are selected as the subjects for inquiry.
First, what are the effects of disaster safety education using multimedia on young children's problem solving ability regarding safety?
Second, what are the effects of disaster safety education using multimedia on young children's perspective-taking ability?
This study randomly assigned 24 students, among 48 young children aged 5 from 2 classes of 'Y' public independent kindergarten and public kindergarten attached to 'C' elementary school, located in 'G' metropolitan city, to experimental group, and the other 24 students to control group. Young children from experimental group watched multimedia regarding disaster safety and received relevant disaster safety education, whereas control group watched multimedia regarding daily life for countermeasures and had a conversation. The experimental treatment was made twice a week for 8 weeks, 15 times in total.
When it comes to the research tool, the researcher amended and supplemented the one which Kwak Eun-Bok(2000) amended and supplemented「Preventing Injury: A Safety Curriculum」of Scott(1992), designed to assess young children's problem solving ability regarding safety, under the circumstances of Korean curriculum. In terms of the testing tool for young children's perspective-taking ability, this study makes the most of the tool which Lee Soo-Gi(2005) amended and supplemented the pictures of which Shin Hyeon-Ok(1996) amended and supplemented, based on the research of Hudson, Forman, and Brion(1982).
As the result of pre-test, which was carried out to find out the homogeneity of young children from experimental group and control group, shows that there is no significant difference in the problem solving ability regarding safety and perspective-taking ability, each group is considered the homogeneous group. All the data collected from pre and post-tests are analyzed by T-test on the exploitation of SPSS 18.0 statistical program.
The result of this study shall be summarized as set forth below.
Firstly, young children from experimental group, who participated in the disaster safety education using multimedia, showed a statistically significant difference in the problem solving ability regarding safety than young children from control group, who had a conversation about daily life. As experimental group gained higher scores in sub-factors of problem solving ability, including 'playing safely', 'abiding by traffic rules', 'coping with dangerous situations', and 'preparing for environmental pollution and disaster', which implies that such education is efficient for improvement of problem solving ability regarding safety.
Secondly, young children from experimental group, who participated in the disaster safety education using multimedia, showed a statistically significant difference in the perspective-taking ability than young children from control group, who had a conversation about daily life. As experimental group gained higher scores in sub-factors of problem solving ability, including 'cognitive perspective-taking', 'affective perspective-taking' which implies that such education is efficient for improvement of perspective-taking ability.
In conclusion, it was found that the disaster safety education using multimedia has a positive influence on young children's problem solving ability regarding safety and perspective-taking ability. Thus, it is full of suggestions that the disaster safety education using multimedia is worthy of being used in the actual field of early childhood education as an efficient teaching-learning method to enhance young children's problem solving ability regarding safety and perspective-taking ability.