The effect of preschool peer bullying education program on children's perceptions of social situations and communication skills

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of the peer bullying training program given to children between the ages of 60-72 months on their perception of social situations and communication skills. The study group of the study consisted of 52 children aged between 60 and 72 months who attended kindergartens affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Konya in the 2022-2023 academic year and children were selected by simple random sampling method. 26 of the children in the study group were determined as the experimental group and 26 of them were determined as the control group. In the study, "Personal Information Form" created by the researcher to determine demographic information about children and their parents, "Communication Skills Scale for 5-6 Year Old Children" to evaluate children's communication skills (Önder, Dağal & Şallı, 2015), "Communication Skills Scale for 5-6 Year Old Children" to evaluate social information processing processes, and "Social Information Processing Process Test for Preschool Children" (Şenol & Metin, 2019) were used. All of the activities in the "Preschool Peer Bullying Education Program" carried out by the researcher were carried out in the classroom. The program was applied to children for 12 weeks, 2 days a week, in a total of 24 sessions. As a result of the study, it was observed that there was a significant difference in the pre-test scores of children's social information processing sub-dimensions in recognizing facial expressions, encoding social cues, diversification and structuring of responses. No significant differences were observed in the sub-dimensions of interpreting social cues, response decision and evaluation. In the study, it was determined that children's communication skills, following the rules in communication and reacting positively to the other person differed significantly in the pre-test scores of the experimental and control groups. No significant difference was found between the scores of actively communicating and considering communication values. In the study, a significant difference was determined in the social information processing sub-dimension post-test scores of the children in the experimental and control groups in the sub-dimensions of recognizing facial expressions, encoding social cues, response decision and evaluation. No significant difference was found between the subscale scores of interpreting social cues, diversification and structuring of reactions. In the study, a significant difference was observed in the post-test scores of the communication skills sub-dimensions of the children in the experimental and control groups, in the active communication and taking into account communication values sub-dimension scores. No significant difference was found between the sub-dimensions scores of complying with communication rules and reacting positively to others. It was determined that the children's social information processing level sub-dimensions scores in the experimental group differed significantly from the post-test scores of the recognition of facial expressions, encoding social cues, interpreting social cues, diversification and structuring of responses, response decision and evaluation sub-dimensions compared to the pre-test scores. According to the children's communication skills scores, it was observed that there was a significant difference in the post-test scores of the sub-dimensions of actively communicating, taking into account communication values, following the rules in communication and reacting positively to the other person in the experimental group, compared to the pre-test scores. In the study, it was determined that the communication skills sub-dimension scores of the children in the experimental group differed significantly compared to the post-test scores of the active communication sub-dimension monitoring scores. It was observed that the monitoring scores of the sub-dimensions of recognizing facial expressions, interpreting social cues, diversification and structuring of reactions did not differ significantly compared to the post-test scores. In the study, social information processing sub-dimension scores differ significantly in the experimental group compared to the active communication sub-dimension monitoring scores and post-test scores.