Observing the effectiveness of picture story book to develop empathy within early age children

Practically, empathy feeling is deemed as an individual ability to understand and take into account the feeling or condition of another individual by giving a response of affection which is identical to what others feel. Children in the age of 5 to 7 are regarded as a pertinent age period of children in developing empathy ability. In this age period, the children progress to feel what others’ feel grows stronger. One attempt to develop children’s empathy ability is to conduct picture storybook reading activity. In particular, the activity using dialog reading. Dialog reading encourages both the children and the teacher to be involved in a discussion and question-answer session. The activity deals with four picture story books comprise of four basic emotional which include anger, sadness, joy, and fear. This present study aims at discovering and observing the progress of children’s empathy feeling development when they are being treated by using dialog reading method. Additionally, it also aims at looking at the difference which occurs between the dialog reading method and conventional reading method. This present study used experiment and control group design. The subject employed were the children of kindergarten in TK Al Islam 1 Surakarta. This study used Empathy Continuum Scoring system as a primary measurement instrument. The measurement instrument has been tested through Content Validity Index (CVI) by the researcher and it was obtained the score of 1.00. Generally, the score of CVI indicated that assessment used for empathy feeling of the children is categorized excellent and meet the expected criterion. Furthermore, the data obtained from the assessment was examined by employing General Linear Model (LM) univariate analysis of variance through computer program SPSS release 20. Upon the results of this study, it indicated that the difference between children who attained dialog reading method and conventional reading method regarding their empathy feeling occurred. It obtained F =4.728 (P=0.22) with X1 Mean = 21.75>X2 = 19.28. in accordance with the results, this study confirmed that dialog reading is preferable and effective on the progress of children’s ability of empathy feeling development.