The effects of the cooperative nature-friendly
education program on child’s
peer competence and emotional intelligence

Min Jung Shin

Early Childhood Education Major
Graduate School of Education
Pukyong National University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the cooperative nature-friendly education program on child''s peer competence and emotional intelligence. And this study was expected to provide information for systematic and various nature-friendly activities based on the educational value about social-emotional development of young children.

The study addressed these research questions.
1. The effect of the cooperative nature-friendly education program on child''s peer competence
2. The effect of the cooperative nature-friendly education program on child''s emotional intelligence

The subjects of this study were 55 five-year-old children, the experimental group and the control group respectively from two kindergartens in Haeundae district of Busan. The experimental treatment, the cooperative nature-friendly education program was implemented 19 times during a 7- week period of time, 3 times a week.

To measure child''s peer competence, I used Park and Lee''s (2001) child''s Peer Competence Scale, and children responded to Peer Rating Scale(Asher & Hymel, 1981) that was used by Kwon(2002). Also to measure child''s emotional intelligence, I used ‘Teacher''s Role Scale for young children''s emotional intelligence’ made by Kim(1998).

The designs of experiments used this study, I used Pretest-posttest controlled-groups to verify the effects of the cooperative nature-friendly education program on the two groups. And the collected data were analyzed by t-test and ANCOVA with PASW 18.0.

The major findings of the study as follows.
First, the cooperative nature-friendly education program had a significant differences on total score of child''s peer competence and 2 sub-elements (prosocial behaviors, leadership) of child''s peer competence.
Second, the cooperative nature-friendly education program had a positive effect on total score of child''s emotional intelligence and 5 sub-elements (''self-emotional recognition and expression'', ''recognition and consideration on others'', ''self-emotion uses'', ''the relationship with teachers'', ''the relationship with peers'') of child''s emotional intelligence.
In conclusion, the cooperative nature-friendly education program was effective on child''s peer competence and emotional intelligence.