Needs Analysis for Development of Learning Module in Shaping Children’s Social-Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Malaysia which aims to enhance children’s social-emotional intelligence in terms of children's ability to experience, control and express emotions, as well as to form close and safe interpersonal relationships with people around them. Social-emotional intelligence among students will affect other types of learning as well as the readiness of preschool students before entering the real school environment. Learning that can improve students’ social-emotional intelligence will make children more active and attract students to participate in classroom activities. This study is conducted to identify whether preschool teachers understand about social-emotional learning as well as the need to provide learning modules in assisting teachers to carry out learning activities that can foster children’s social-emotional intelligence. Needs analysis was conducted to develop related learning modules through quantitative methods using questionnaire instruments distributed to 30 preschool teachers around the Klang Valley from different preschools. The instrument contained three constructs to be evaluated, namely the level of teacher understanding, level of social-emotional learning implementation and also level of need for social-emotional learning modules in preschool. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively to acquire the mean values ​​and standard deviations for the scores obtained for each construct. The results of the study found that the level of teachers’ understanding was high, level of implementation was moderately high and level of need for learning module was high. This study is significant to provide preliminary information on the need to construct learning modules for nurturing children's social-emotional intelligence. This study can be improved in the future by involving more respondents to obtain more accurate data on needs analysis.