The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of emotional education activities using life-based children's stories on emotional intelligence of young children. It aims to provide a plan for emotional education activities using life-based chil...
The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of emotional education activities using life-based children's stories on emotional intelligence of young children. It aims to provide a plan for emotional education activities using life-based children's stories, which allow young children to perceive and express their emotions, have their emotions stimulate thinking, use emotional information, and control emotions in early childhood education practice. For this purpose, the following questions were set:
1. How do emotional education activities using life-based children's stories affect emotional intelligence of four-year-olds: emotional awareness and expression, thinking stimulation by emotions, use of emotional knowledge, and reflective control of emotions?
An experimental study was conducted to determine how emotional education activities using life-based children's stories affected emotional intelligence of young children. The experiment was performed in 40 four-year-old children at the public kindergarten attached to A Elementary School in Seoul from March 31 and May 2, 2014. The children in the experimental group performed emotional education activities by reading life-based children's stories and having a diversity of emotional experiences in a total of 14 sessions over five weeks in total, while those in the control group were asked to read life-based children's stories and share their ideas and feelings briefly. The Teacher Rating Based Emotional Intelligence Scale for Young Children developed by Lee, Lee, and Shin (2000) was used to test young children's emotional intelligence; pretest and posttest were performed in experimental and control groups, followed by independent sample t-test.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows: The emotional education activities using life-based children's stories positively affected the development of emotional intelligence in early childhood. The activities also positively affected four sub-areas of emotional intelligence: emotional awareness and expression, thinking stimulation by emotions, use of emotional knowledge, and reflective control of emotions. This implies that emotional education activities using life-based children's stories may give young children chances to have emotional experiences in a familiar and realistic context, perceive and express their emotions and those of others properly, and use and control emotions in each situation, consequently affecting development of emotional intelligence positively.