The purpose of this study was to find out how role-play using picture books affects children's empathy and peer competence, and based on the results for teaching-learning methods that can be used in early childhood education fields. The research quest...
The purpose of this study was to find out how role-play using picture books affects children's empathy and peer competence, and based on the results for teaching-learning methods that can be used in early childhood education fields. The research questions selected in this study for this purpose are as follows.
1. how does role-play using picture books affect Young children's empathy?
2. how does role-play using picture books affect Young children’s peer competence?
This study was conducted with 40 children aged 5 years(experimental group: 20, comparative group: 20) in kindergarten A located in G city. The experimental group participated in role-play using a total of 14 picture books twice a week for 7 weeks, and the comparative group read picture books during the same period and proceeded to share general stories.
To examine the children’s empathy, this study used a Affective Situation Test(AST) tool which was modified and supplemented by Choi Mi-sook(2010) and For peer competence test tools of Park Joo-hee and Lee Eun-hae(2001) were used to examine the peer performance of children. With the data collected through pre-test and post-test data, a t-test was conducted, using the SPSS(20.0) statistical program.
The results of this study are summarized as follows.
First, as a result of the post-test between the experimental group that performed role-play using picture books and the comparative group that performed story-telling using picture books, the experimental group that performed role-play using picture books had a statistically significant score of empathy. In the sub-area of empathy, kinds of the 'joy', 'sorrow', 'horror', and 'anger', the experimental group showed significantly higher than the comparative group. This result means that the role-play using picture books was effective in improving empathy of Young children.
Second, as a result of post-test between the experimental group that performed role-play using picture books and the comparative group that performed story-telling using picture books, the experimental group that performed role-play using picture books had a statistically significant score of peer competence. In the sub-area of peer competence, kinds of the 'socialism', 'sociality', and 'lead ability', the experimental group showed significantly higher than the comparative group. This result means that role-play using picture books was effective in improving peer competence of young children.
To sum up the above results, role-play using picture books improved the empathy and peer competence of Young children. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that role-play using picture books are worthy of being used in the field of ealry childhood education as an effective teaching-learning method to improve young children’s empathy and peer competence.