School of Empathy for Enhancing Children’s Well-being

Abstract

This study was aimed to examine the effects of School of Empathy on emotional and psychological well-being on elementary school age children in one of the public elementary schools in Yogyakarta. The study involved 13 children aged 9-14 years divided into 7 in children experimental group and 6 in children control group. This study used quasi experiment design with control group with pre-test & post-test design. The instrument used in this study is the Indonesian version of the School of Empathy (SoE) module developed by Stueck et al. (2010) and the Emotional and Psychological Well-being Scale for Children adapted from The Stirling Children's Well-being Scale (Liddle & Carter, 2015). Data analysis used parametric statistic independent sample t-test. The results showed that children's well-being score between the experimental group (M = 32.71, SD = 3.904) and control group (M = 33.83, SD = 4.956); (t (11) =-0.456, p = 0.657), on the positive emotional state (t (11) =-0.540, p = 0.6) and positive outlook (t (11) =-0.305, p = 0.766). Effect size score of treatment (SoE training) on children's well-being (r = 0.136), positive emotional state (r = 0.160) and positive outlook (r = 0.091). The conclusion of this study is that no differences between the experimental group and the control group. SoE training has little effect on emotional and psychological well-being. The results of the study are discussed further. Index Terms-Children, emotional and psychological well-being, school of empathy.

The influence of Biodanza and School of Empathy verbal – respectful communication on the ability to express emotions and needs: a pilot study among adults in Indonesia

“…To maintain harmony with society, they tend to suppress their emotions and needs. These findings are in line with the previous research of SoE-verbal among children (non-violent communication) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Trimulyaningsih, Novitasari, & Qudsyi, 2014;Qudsyi et al, 2018;Widiasmara et al, 2018). Javanese children had difficulties to express their feelings because there are around 100 words about emotion in Javanese language.…”

“…Participants reported after the session of SoE-verbal that they could find some difficulties to apply this to inexpressive people, in constant communication, how to accept a negative response, to make the feeling neutral, to understand others' feelings, and to express negative feelings like anger which tend to be repressed in society. This is supported with the previous study among children in Indonesia indicating that SoE-verbal tends to change the positive outlook of individual emotions rather than feelings (Widiasmara et al, 2018). Compared with the SoE-verbal, Biodanza gives a promising approach to help people become aware of their emotion.…”

“…Among those previous studies of SoE NVC, the Indonesian researchers investigated the effect of SoE on children's well-being (Widiasmara, Novitasari, Trimulyaningsih, & Stueck, 2018). It was found that there were no differences in children's well-being between control and experiment groups.…”

Editorial: Biocentric development: studies on the consequences of COVID-19 towards human growth and sustainability

“…for children and adults would be helpful (Stueck, 2010;Stück, 2013;Widiasmara et al, 2018). Related to this model (see Figure 1), the topic articles in this Research Topic on "Biocentric development and COVID-19" can be categorized into three aspects:…”

“…For this reason, further research on a biocentric evidence-based intervention, e.g. “School of Empathy,” for children and adults would be helpful (Stueck, 2010 ; Stück, 2013 ; Widiasmara et al, 2018 ).…”