Educators’ and Parents’ Estimates of Preschool Children’s Social Skills

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the research on the assessment of social skills in preschool children provided by educators and parents. Starting from the fact that social skills represent special abilities for performing specific social tasks, it seemed interesting to investigate the significance of the development of social skills in preschool children, which the research presents from the perspective of educators and parents. In order to determine this, in the second half of the work year 2022/2023, the research was conducted on a unique sample of educators and parents (N = 388) from the area of the City of Belgrade and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Republic of Serbia). The research results collected by Scaler – EEP-SSCPA (a = .866) and processed by the Mann-Whitney U test, Medians and calculated eta-square showed that educators and parents of preschool children mostly have unanimous assessments about the need and importance of developing preschool children’s social skills, primarily their cooperation, self-control and assertiveness. No significant difference was found in the educators’ and parents’ assessments of the disruptive influence that externalized and internalized problems in the behaviour of preschool children can potentially have on the development of their social skills. Based on the results of the research, the paper points out the need to implement educational work in kindergartens by means of innovative educational systems that include play and other activities of children derived from project-based learning, which allows them to be more involved in their development, education and learning, while relationships and actions in different life and practical circumstances in the kindergarten, family and social environment enable them to obtain benefits for themselves and develop their own social skills.