Prosocial Behaviour in Educational Environment

“A teacher’s, value orientation usually sets the tone and creates the environment that the teacher deems acceptable”. I agree with the statement because a person’s values that is, principles or standards behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life. As it sets the tone as to what is acceptable for the environment. Prosocial behaviour is voluntary, intentional behaviour that results in benefits for another person. Such behaviour is altruistic if it is motivated by a genuine desire to benefit another person, without any expectation of benefits to oneself. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the impact of teacher’s value orientation, has as with setting the standard that motivates prosocial behaviour in their work environment. This is in line with the declaration of Ennis and Chen (1993). They stated that “Value orientations represent theoretical belief systems that guide teachers’ curricular decision making.” Value orientations are a subsystem of consciousness in which values are recognized by a person as strategic goals in life and general worldview attitudes. In other words, the system of value orientations includes the principles of behaviour in society, as well as the principles of understanding of their own behaviour and the behaviour of other people.

The quality of education depends on the competence of the teacher and his/her value orientations. According to them, for children to learn and demonstrate prosocial behaviours, the teacher should display these three value orientations which includes helping, cooperation and sharing. They can influence the value orientation of the students mostly by “own example” and then by “the way of explanation of the subject”. Their recommendations can be categorized into two groups. Firstly: “friendly encouragement”, “friendly attitude”, “love for people”, requires the right behaviour of a teacher as a person. Second category: “consistency in the enforcement of established rules”, “stating the examples from practice”, “discussion”, and “topic selection” are closer to the fulfilment of the role of a teacher.

A teacher would need to display prosocial behaviour which refer to voluntary actions specifically intended to benefit or improve the well-being of another individual or group of individuals. Examples of such behaviours include helping, sharing, consoling, comforting, cooperating, and protecting someone from any potential harm, for children to learn to demonstrate pro-social behaviour. The development of prosocial behaviours is important during the early years as these actions are associated with social and emotional competence throughout childhood (example: peer acceptance, empathy, self-confidence, and emotion regulation skills).

Furthermore, prosocial behaviours are associated with academic performance, and the development of cognitive competencies, such as problem-solving and moral reasoning, all of which are contributing to a positive school adjustment. To foster prosocial behaviours in young children, early interventions should emphasize: caring relationships with adults and peers, adults modelling of prosocial characteristics; training in empathy and perspective taking; and active learning approaches such as cooperative learning. Cooperative means working together willingly to accomplish a job or task and the motive is unselfish. For example, the teacher can demonstrate cooperation by. Also, by displaying a willingness to help by performing random acts of kindness each day or by defending others, or even removing the cause of another’s distress. If the source of motivation is not personal of an unselfish motive.

Teachers can assist children into displaying these pro-social behaviours such helping, sharing and cooperating by using practical strategies in order to create a positive classroom environment. As they imitate models social behaviour who are powerful, authoritative, consistent and who give without grumbling. These strategies include: emphasizing cooperation rather than competition, teaching games that emphasize cooperation and conflict resolution, setting up classroom spaces and materials to facilitate cooperative play, using literature to enhance empathy and caring, and encouraging social interactions between children of different abilities whether it is social, emotional, or physical. The teacher should state the expectation as to what they expect the children to do, that is cooperate, share and help. Promoting helping skills and acts of kindness by setting up opportunities in the dramatic play area such as a children’s hospital. Preparing muffins and sharing them as a cooking experience. Facilitating play groups for those reluctant to join in. Setting up bath time for baby dolls in the sensory table. Model caring and helping behaviours. Supplying paint, brushes and a very large piece of paper for the whole class to make a mural in the art area. After the completion of these activities verbally label these prosocial behaviour and express clearly the behaviour that was observed so that children comprehend clearly when they have helped shared or cooperate.

For prosocial behaviour to take place children must develop cognitive competencies, specific skills and emotional competencies. For children to learn to share they must realize that as an individual he/she is separate from other individuals and must possess the ability to take another’s perspective. This means they should be able to think about what the other person needs are and understand that they can help to meet the needs. Children are required to have sufficient language skills to describe how others may be feeling and describe their feeling also. These forms as part of their cognitive competencies. To display skill development children, need to know how to help, share and cooperate, to do this they need specific skills. For example, the child must have social skills of approaching with a need and must know what to say as they offer something. This is an innate ability a child own from bonding with their care givers and teachers. The final competency children need to possess in order to display pro-social behaviour are as follows: children need to have emotional capacity to respond to another person’s call for help, while emotional competences involve decoding emotions in another person’s face, the decoding process begins in infancy and develops demonstrate empathy. This means the child is participating in another person’s or animal’s feelings.