Silent Story, Loud Empathy: Investigating Children's Empathy on Deforestation

Date

2024-7-10

Author

Üzüm, Sabiha
Başer, Ceren
Tanrısevdi, Mine

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The present multiple-embedded case study aims to investigate how young children raised in an urban area respond by categorizing their empathic reactions to deforestation using an eco-friendly silent picture book. In this respect, two five-year-old children who resided in an urban setting and had not experienced any non-urban life participated in the study. The data was collected using an eco-friendly silent picture book with a semi-structured interview. Besides, a play observation with the story characters as toys and a book-like playground was provided with the co-player role of the researchers. The data collected from the transcriptions of the story and play sessions' video recordings was analyzed with the content analysis. The study revealed that the two urban-dwelling children exhibit insufficient empathy towards deforestation and natural life. Mostly indicated empathy category was "attention to others' emotions" and children only noticed the situation of deforestation, but insufficiently exhibited "prosocial behaviors", "sympathy", and "personal distress". This situation was discussed due to children's lack of experience in unfamiliar situation regarding nature which might cause anthropocentric views. Since there might be a possibility of anthropocentric and apathetic behaviors in children towards nature and natural problems in the future, engaging students in nature-based activities and outdoors was suggested to enhance children’s empathy towards nature.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/109628

Collections

Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Conference / Seminar