Research On Children’s Social Behaviors During Cooperative Board Games

Cooperative board game is a special form of board games, different with competitive board game, it encourages mutual cooperation rather than confrontation. In the game, children work together toward the same goal, and this emphasis on the teamwork precisely meets the requirements of present era of preschoolers’social competence cultivation. So, what kind of social development opportunities can cooperative board games provide for the children? In the cooperative board games, what is the feature of children’s social behaviors? How about the difference with traditional competitive board games?This research, choosing young children aged 5-6 as research objects, adopts observation, case analysis and interviews methods to collect data, and studys children’s social behaviors including interactive behaviors and behaviors of rules from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In the analysis process, through contrasting with the competitive, semi-cooperative board games, the author summarized the characteristics and influence factors of social behaviors in the cooperative board games.The study indicates that:Firstly, the cooperative board games provide sufficient opportunities for children’s social development. To be specific, the positive interactions in the cooperative board games are more than competitive and semi-cooperative board games, while negative interaction are fewer than other kinds of games. Secondly, the cooperative board games have a great help to increase the positive interactions and decrease negative interactions, while there is no significant change in competitive and semi-cooperative board games. Finally, the"cooperation model"of cooperative board games is an important factor affecting children’s social behaviors. The study also found that the cooperative board games could also lead children appear collective cheating behaviors, which is the peculiar phenomenon.Based on the above research achievements, the researcher makes some suggestions on how to take advantage of cooperative board games to promote the young children’s social development. The recommendations are as follows:changing concepts, emphasise the educational values of cooperative board games; clear positioning, encourage teachers to play guiding roles in the game; giving materials scientifically, meet the development needs of different children; homemading games, stimulate children’s idea of cooperation and awareness of the rules; integrating cleverly, use cooperative board games for social education.