The Effect of Social Skill Training of Early Childhood Education During COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic affects the education sector, therefore, the strategy implemented by the government was social distancing and the children’s education must be held at home and they focused on all gadgets A day, so it makes the children rarely interact socially, and also parents also find it difficult to teach social interactions with children. AIM: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of social skills training on social skills of early childhood education during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This type of research is an experiment with a true experimental design. The population in this study were all early childhood education students in Surabaya. The sample in this study was pre-school age children in early childhood education in Surabaya. The sampling technique is used by simple random sampling. The sample size in this study comprised of 120 students. The indicator to measure the childhood social skills, with seven criteria, was communicative, cooperative, self-effacing, responsible, empathetic, sociability skills, and self-control. This intervention runs in eight sessions. RESULTS: The results of the independent t-test statistical test, p = 0.000 in the intervention group and p = 0.436 in the control group, p < 0.05, it can be concluded that there was a significant change in the level of social skill before and after being given social intervention skills training in the intervention group. CONCLUSIONS: Social skills training has a behavior modification technique. Social skill training has a significant effect on the development of social skills in early childhood education during the COVID-19 pandemic.