유아들의 친구관계 질적특성에 관한 연구

The objective of the present study is in-depth examination of friendship, which has significant effects on young children’s social development, and for this purpose, a research question was formulated as follows. For the purpose of this study, Following research question: 1. What are the qualitative characteristics of young children’s friendship? The subjects of this study were two five-year-old children, Park Jin-yeol (pseudonym) and Yoon Hyeong-jin (pseudonym) selected from a class at W Kindergarten in Cheongwon-gun Chungcheongbuk-do. Data were collected through observing and recording the children, interviews, and the teacher’s reflective journals during the research. Collected data were conceptualized for examining the qualitative characteristics of the children’s friendship and the roles of friends, and the derived concepts were interconnected based on a category, and expressed in hierarchy according to the relation of related categories. Using the processed data, the meanings were analyzed and interpreted. At the end, concepts derived from these analysis methods were integrated. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, young children’s friendship showed similarity, approximation, attachment, and relationship, initiative, supportive based on the various patterns. Because they formed friendship based on the similarity of attending the same class, their age did not affect friendship. Children showed the tendency of feeling friendship learning tools or intimate animals that they played with. They created imaginative friendsin their mind and played and lived them together. Young children expressed their affection for friends verbally by saying like, company with or popular. In addition, they expressed their affection actively by playing the friends, sitting beside them, or planning together. To maintain friendship based on affection, they expressed and shared their thoughts or feelings actively. It was found that, in order to have opportunities to make friends those whom they liked, young children kept friendship those around the friends. They responded in a way preferred by their friends in order maintain friendship, and extended the range of friendship through established relations. As they played favorite plays the closest friends, they experienced pleasure from the plays as well as pleasure from associating close friends and this gave the children a positive idea on and satisfaction friendship. It appeared that young children developed friendship further through interactive behaviors such as helping a friend who was doing a difficult activity or asking helps. Second, young children experienced friendship conflicts such as fighting and reconciliation, beating and alienating, violating rules, etc. Children distinguished between mistakes and deliberate acts, and showed social behaviors like forgiving friends’ faults and restoring friendship through reconciliation. Children did not associate those whoacted aggressively without reason, and those who violated rules, they maintained association while giving information on the rules and demanding to keep the rules.