Pre-school education is a crucial step for developing cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills of children. Advanced problem solving skills can provide excellent opportunities socially and cognitively. Those skills help children to think flexible and cope with any challenge in real-life problems (Bentley, 2012). Moreover, they prepare children for dynamic society of twenty-first century. Pre-school children can improve their social skills and competences within their school environment. In this context, to develop children's social and cognitive skills and to make them deal with real-life problems, Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS) program has been designed by Shure (1992) and adapted to Turkish by Öğülmüş (2001). It aims to teach children how to think rather than what to think and it helps children resolve typical interpersonal problems with peers and adults. It aims to develop a problem solving thinking ‘‘style’’ that would guide them to produce alternative solutions for everyday problems (Shure, 2001). In the light of other research findings, as a need of twenty-first century skill, problem-solving skills can be gained and improved through well-structured educational programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the Interpersonal Cognitive Problem-Solving Program (ICPS), in developing problem-solving skills of five and six year-old preschool children.

2. Participants

The sample of the study consisted of 45 (20 girls, 20 boys) pre-school students who studied in private pre-school in Ankara, Turkey. Since the researchers are the teachers of this private school, convenience sampling technique was used to select the research group.

3. Research Method

In this study, as an experimental design, one-group pretest-posttest design were used. The researchers used Preschool Interpersonal Problem-Solving Test (PIPS) developed by Shure (1990) and adapted to Turkish by Dinçer (1995) to measure student interpersonal problem solving skills as a pretest. The pre-school teachers were taught how to apply 59 sessions of ICPS in their lessons and during four months, they applied it in their classroom. After the treatment, the researchers collected the data of posttests.

4. Outcomes and Conclusions of the Research

To analyze the data of pretest and posttest, the wilcoxon signed-rank test is used. The results of this study demonstrate that Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS) program has a significant effect on developing problem-solving skills of pre-school children. The findings also show that ICPS education was significantly effective to resolve problems with peers and adults. There was no significant difference between boys and girls regarding to their interpersonal problem solving skills.

5. Implications for future research

To examine the effectiveness of ICPS program in Turkey, true experimental designs can be conducted with different kind research groups. Besides, problem solving skills are relevant with other cognitive skills, to determine the effectiveness of the program, it can be tested with related cognitive variables.

References

Bentley, T. (2012). Learning beyond the classroom: Education for a changing world. Routledge.

Dinçer, Ç. (1995). Anaokuluna devam eden 5 yaş grubu çocuklarına kişiler arası problem çözme becerilerinin kazandırılmasında eğitimin etkisinin incelenmesi. Yayımlanmamış Doktora Tezi, Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Ankara.

Öğülmüş, S. (2001). Kişiler arası sorun çözme becerileri ve eğitimi. Ankara: Nobel Yayıncılık.

Shure, M. (1990).The PIPS Test Manual. Philadelphia: Department of Psychology, Drexel University.

Shure, M.(1992). I Can Problem Solve: An Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving Program (ICPS) Preschool. Illinois, Champain: Research Press.

Shure, M. B. (2001). I can problem solve (ICPS): An interpersonal cognitive problem solving program for children. Residential Treatment for Children & Youth, 18(3), 3-14.