Educational environment influence on the pre-school children’s social cognition development

Abstract

The impact of the type of educational environment showed an influence on the social cognition of pre-school children. An essential characteristic of social maturity was meta-cognitive understanding, in which children were capable of social thinking and accepting the opinion and the position of others and demonstrating pro-social actions. The research examined three types of educational environments as “open,” “closed,” and “mixed.” Groups of children of different types of the educational environment were determined by the presence or absence of a significant criterion - a unique communicative space organized by the teacher - open or closed. It revealed the results of twenty-five children who studied in three types of educational environments using the three different techniques like “Pictures,” “Incomplete stories,” and “Clarity.” It showed significant differences in the data on indicators of children's social cognition: semantic perception of a problem situation - perceptual aspect; proposed actions reflecting a strategy for resolving a problem situation - the behavioral aspect, and child's assessment of character behavior is an evaluation aspect. The research also displayed that the most effective type was an "open educational environment" for developing the social cognition of children.