Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Early Childhood Education Journal, 2023 (SSCI)
The present study aimed to examine the effect of a dialogic book reading program on preschool children’s perspective taking skills. In line with this aim, a dialogic book reading program was designed, and its effects were tested in a quasi-experimental study involving both pre/post and follow-up tests. The study group consisted of 42 five-year old children (21 children in the intervention group, 21 children in the control group) who were attending a preschool education institution in Antalya, Turkey. In the study, the Perspective Taking Test for Children (PTC) was used in order to assess the children’s perspective taking skills. In the program implementation, the PTC was administered to both the intervention and control group as a pre-test. Subsequently, the dialogic reading program was applied to the intervention group for six weeks. After the implementation of the program, PTC was administered to both groups as a post-test, and a follow-up test was administered to the intervention group one month later. As a result, statistically significant differences were found between the pre-test and post-test scores of all sub-dimensions and the total scores for perspective taking of the children in the intervention group (p < 0.01). In other words, an increase was seen in the perspective taking skills in the intervention group after the implementation of the dialogic book reading program. This effect was found to be sustained in the follow-up test one month after the implementation of the program. According to the results obtained, it is thought that dialogic reading, which facilitates the active participation of children in the reading process, can support children’s perspective-taking skills by enabling them to focus on the emotional and mental states of the characters in the story, and thus, to acquire indirect social experiences. The results are discussed in line with the literature findings and suggestions are made for further studies. The findings of the present study reveal the necessity to use this method more widely in preschool education.