This study aims at looking into how global citizenship education activities affect the level of young children's global citizenship and their empathy, and providing the childhood education field with effective global citizenship education activities w...
This study aims at looking into how global citizenship education activities affect the level of young children's global citizenship and their empathy, and providing the childhood education field with effective global citizenship education activities which help young children internalize appropriate global citizenship and enhance their empathy. In order to achieve this goal, the two questions I raised for this study are as follows: depending on whether young children aged 5 actually participated in global citizenship education activities,
1. Is there any differences in the level of their global citizenship?
2. Is there any change in the level of their empathy?
The following experiments were conducted with the purpose of studying how global citizenship education activities affect the level of 5-year-old young children's global citizenship and empathy. The subjects for this study (total 44) were selected from a private kindergarten which is located at Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do (hereinafter a kindergarten "N"), and classified into an experimental group (22) and comparative group (22). From Jun. 12th to Nov. 2nd, 2013 (total 19 weeks), the above experimental group participated in global citizenship education activities. For young children's global citizenship, the researcher herself developed its assessment tool with reference to "the survey for young children's awareness and attitudes to international understanding" extracted from a paper "Status of International Understanding Education & Its Comparative Study," written by the UNESCO in 1995, and a testing tool developed by Jang Ju-hye in 2008 by revising the survey above for elementary schoolers. In addition, young children's empathy was assessed with the testing tool that Mun Yeon-sim designed in 2004 by evaluating and revising the "Affective Situation Test." This test was originally devised for elementary schoolers by Feshbach and Roe in 1968. Preliminary and post tests were conducted on both the experimental and comparative groups in order to measure the effectiveness of the experiments. The results of theses tests were compared and analyzed with "T test," a computer statistical program.
The results of this study could be summarized as follows: First, global citizenship education activities raised young children's awareness of global citizenship. Comparing with the comparative group, the experimental group showed higher achievement at all the assessment elements about global citizenship (consisting of "Interest in International Affairs" and "Participation in Problem Solving Activities") between their preliminary and post tests. It indicates that global citizenship education activities help young children have interest in international affairs and encourage them to participate in problem solving activities.
Second, global citizenship education activities enhanced the level of young children's empathy. Among the assessment elements about empathy ("Happiness" "Sadness" "Fear" and "Anger"), the experimental group made better achievement than the comparative group at all the elements above except for "Happiness" between their preliminary and post tests. It shows that global citizenship education activities led young children to feel and accept various emotions, finally improving their empathy level.
In conclusion, global citizenship education activities have a positive influence on young children's global citizenship and their empathy. The result above indicates that global citizenship education activities not only encourage young children to have interest in international affairs and participate in problem solving activities, but also lead them to consider and understand others with increased empathy ability.