This research has been performed to examine what effects raising animals through cooperative learning has on eco-friendly attitudes and pro-social behavior in early childhood education centers aimed at 5-year-old children.
The subjects were aimed a...
This research has been performed to examine what effects raising animals through cooperative learning has on eco-friendly attitudes and pro-social behavior in early childhood education centers aimed at 5-year-old children.
The subjects were aimed at the experimental group of 21 children, one class of 5-year-old children in M Kindergarten, located in Dongjak-gu of Seoul and at the comparative group of 25 children, randomly chosen, and one class of 5-year-old children in S Kindergarten. The experimental treatment of this research was performed on children of an experimental group for 12 weeks from April 16th in 2012 to July 6th in 2012. Ecological observations of animals were conducted in free-choice activity time and the questions about animals were selected while children observed animals in storytelling time so as to answer the questions and then related activities were searched. After that, ecological inquiry activities and related activities based on cooperative learning, Learning Together, were performed twice a week, 24 times in total.
The research was proceeded in order of preliminary test, pre-test, experimental treatment and post-test and before cooperative learning and the teacher promoted social skills of children through group building. During experimental treatment in the experimental group, the comparative group observed animals individually or in a large group within a breeding farm in the observational area.
The research was aimed at the experimental group and the comparative group and tested for eco-friendly attitudes and pro-social behavior before and after experimental treatment. To measure children's eco-friendly attitudes, the measurement was used, to which Huh Yun-jeong(2001) adopted CATES-PV(The children's Attitudes Toward the Environment Scale-Preschool Vison) by Musser and Diamond(1999).
With regard to pro-social behavior, revised and adapted Skill Situation Measurement in sociality development program by Lee Won-yong, Park Chan-ok and No Young-Hui(1993) was utilized as the measurement of pro-social behavior. The research issues have been established as follows:
Research issue 1. How does raising animals through cooperative learning affect children's eco-friendly attitudes?
Research issue 2. How does raising animals through cooperative learning influence children's pro-social behavior?
This research verified homogeneity between two groups using the pre-test scores through independent samples, t-test, to examine raising animals through cooperative learning has an effect on the improvement of children's eco-friendly attitudes and pro-social behavior. After that, the effect differences between two groups through the scores of post-test using independent samples t-test were compared and analyzed. The results are as follows:
First, raising animals through cooperative learning improved children's eco-friendly attitudes positively. That is to say, there is a meaningful difference between the experimental group and the comparative group regarding eco-friendly attitudes.
In its sub-factors, children's eco-friendly attitudes has a meaningful difference between groups; that is, raising animals through cooperative learning improves eco-friendly attitudes. When it comes to environmental conservation attitudes, there is a meaningful difference between groups, implying that raising animals through cooperative learning improves environmental conservation attitudes.
Second, raising animals through cooperative learning positively elevates pro-social behavior. In other words, there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the comparative group regarding pro-social behavior.
In its sub-factors of pro-social behavior, children' ability of emotion regulation has a significant difference between groups. This indicates that raising animals through cooperative learning improves children' ability of emotion regulation. Concerning interpersonal relationship formative competence, there is a meaningful difference between groups, suggesting that raising animals through cooperative learning elevates interpersonal relationship formative competence of children. Regarding adjustability in kindergarten, there is a significant difference between groups. implying that raising animals through cooperative learning improves children' adjustability in kindergarten.