Action Research On Raising Children’s Emotional Competence Based On Dialogic Reading

Emotional competence refers to the ability of children to recognize and understand their own emotions and those of others and to regulate and control their emotions appropriately on this basis.Emotional competence is essential in children’s socialization,personal achievement,and mental health.Emotional picture storybooks are widely used as an effective medium to enhance children’s emotional competence.However,kindergarten teachers still have some problems with organizing and guiding the reading activities by using emotional picture storybooks,especially in how teachers analyze the emotional value of picture books,how teachers and children dialogue around emotions,and how children consolidate their emotional experiences.Therefore,this study uses the steps and strategies of dialogic reading as the basis for conducting moving picture storybook teaching activities and explores the paths and ways for teachers to use dialogic reading to promote children’s emotional competence.Using action research as the primary paradigm,this study was conducted over four months.Through specific methods such as observations,interviews and experimentation,this study based on dialogic reading strategies to conduct a practical exploration of how teachers can engage in emotion dialogues with children to improve their emotional competence.The researcher entered the study site,developed an action plan with the cooperating teachers,and adopted the "reflection-planning-action-rethinking" process model to explore teachers’ instructional strategies continuously.The study went through three main stages:The first stage focused on children’s enhancement of emotion recognition,grasped the two keys of vocabulary and expression characteristics of basic emotions,and guided children to gradually learn to identify their own and others’ basic emotions in observation and expression,and revised and consolidated their initial concepts of various types of emotions in terms of language,expression actions,and representation records;The second stage focused on enhancing children’s emotional understanding ability,adjusting the steps of dialogic reading and questioning strategies,focusing on children’s explanation and attribution of emotions,and enriching and strengthening children’s experience and expression of emotions through extended reading and repeated reading.The third stage focuses on children’s emotion regulation ability.It mainly uses open-ended prompts to carry out dialogic reading on children’s emotional problems,encourages children to share their emotions with peers,and know how to use emotional experiences in their lives.Finally,the effectiveness of this action research was evaluated from two dimensions: teachers’ professional development and children’s emotional development.The effectiveness of this action research on children’s emotional development was examined from the perspective of quantitative analysis and qualitative materials obtained from observations and interviews.The study showed that dialogic reading could positively contribute to children’s emotion recognition,understanding,and regulation skills.The following conclusions were drawn from this action research: teachers can improve children’s emotional competence by combining emotional dialogue strategy,imitation experience strategy,comprehensive reading strategy,repetitive reading strategy,environmental interaction strategy,and empathic companionship strategy in the process of dialogic reading.