engleski

Social competence and behavior of preschool children: gender differences

The presented results are the part of scientific project “ Prevention of Behavior Disorders in Local Community” conducted by Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences of the University of Zagreb (principal investigator: Josipa Basic, Ph.D.) and Administrative Department of Health Care and Social Welfare of the Region of Istria, Croatia. The project involves both, research and action and has expert teams formed for this purpose who work together with researchers on prevention at selected locations. Main aim of project is finding the model that would simultaneously be described thought positive development of young person, strengthening families, schools, and caring communities, as well as promote health, education and protection. This presentation will particularly include the assessment of social competence and behavior of preschool children and differences regarding the gender. In the random-stratificated sample there were 445 children, aged from 3 to 6 and half years old, 221 boys and 224 girls from 25 preschool institutions in the Region of Istria, Republic of Croatia. The data were collected by questionnaire Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE). Statistical methods were factor analysis and discriminative analysis. By factor analysis 3 factors have been extracted: (1) social adaptation, (2) behavior, and (3) emotional competence. Regarding the differences between the sub-samples (boys and girls) discriminative analysis has shown the statistically significant difference between two sub-samples. Results showed that girls have better emotional competence than boys by preschool teachers report. Emotional competences are important factor in concept of resilience, and it is known that boys are in greater risk for developing problem behavior, what leads to conclusion of necessity for gender sensitive programs in preschool settings so as to insure enhancement of emotional competencies in boys.

preschool children; social competence; emotional competence; behaviour; prevention

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