Research

Developing Social-Emotional Competence Playfully

In their development, children acquire various behaviours that enable them to adapt their own emotional experience and emotional expression to the situation and to interact effectively with other people. Children develop these emotional and social skills not alone, but together with their educators and play partners. A support of the social-emotional competence by caregivers in the kindergarten contributes to the school readiness and has a positive effect on the further educational success of the children.

Our research project TINEO is an empirical study in which various methods are applied, informants from several contexts (kindergarten, family) provide information and the social-emotional development of the children is displayed longitudinal. In this project we are interested in which interactions with educators and other children are helpful for the development of social-emotional competence. In addition, the focus is on how children shape the interactions with their individual temperament.
The social-emotional competence of the children is recorded in a playful way and from a scientific perspective in the kindergarten. In order to include interaction with others, a group game is integrated into the kindergarten and videographed. The group game is a card game in which the players are looking for the same pairs of cards, similar to the well-known game “Halli Galli”. Since the game is a unique and specific situation, we would like to ask educators, as experts in their field, about various everyday situations in kindergarten. For that questionnaires will be handed out to the educators. Since parents experience their children in many different contexts (e.g. with friends or on the playground), we ask them to provide written information about the temperament of their children.

The participation of educators and parents in the TINEO project will contribute to the further development of early childhood education in Germany. The results of the project should form the basis for innovative pedagogical concepts to promote social-emotional competence.