Chapter 1: Introduction

Personality development has always been a major concern

in psychology field. For its definition, it is the development

of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that makes

a person distinctive, and it occurs by the ongoing interaction

of temperament, character, and environment (“Personality

development”, n.d.). Every single child has his own

personality and responds to caregivers or experiences

differently. According to Ormrod (2010), children begin to

show significant differences in personality long before they

begin school, that is- they show some consistency in their

reactions in a wide variety of situations. A child personality

has several components: temperament, character, and

environment. These components are interrelated and carry very

important role in developing a child’s personality as how well

their temperament fits with the environment and how well they

are received by the people in the environment will determine

how a child sees himself and others. In general, a child’s

temperament is his tendency or in-born traits to react and

deal with the environmental events in particular ways (Ormrod,

2010). Genes do not specify personality traits, but do control

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the development of the nervous system, which in turn controls

behavior. Besides, most of the experts did agree that

environment, e.g. high quality parenting, critically affects

child personality, especially when well-adapting their

parenting approach to the temperament of their child. Next,

character is the set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral

patterns learned from the experience that determines how a

person thinks, feels, and behaves.

A theory on the effect of birth order on personality had

been proposed by an Australian psychiatric called Alfred Adler

(Walcutt, 2009). Some experts believe that birth order is an

important tool in shaping how a child turns out as an adult as

it determines how a child sees the world, how he expects the

world to treat him, and how he treats other. According to

Walcutt (2009), Adler said that the firstborns are leaders,

and feel “dethroned” when the next child comes along and that

they never recover from that, and actual youngest is pampered

and spoilt. Other than that, contemporary approaches to birth

order often examine the influence of birth order on what are

considered as the Big Five personality traits: Openness,

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Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and

Neuroticism.

Besides, moral development is a process which an

individual developing their proper behavior and attitude

within the society across their life course. One of the

important functions of the children’s moral development is

learn to differentiate the right or wrong things and use the

knowledge to make a right choices or decisions. There are

factors that will shape the children development of morality

such as their home environment and the relationship with their

parents, peers group, as well as their cognitive, physical,

social and emotional development (Dombeck, 2010).

Jean Piaget introduces two type of moral development

which is heteronomous morality (younger child) and autonomous

morality (older children). According Piaget, children are

entering a heteromonous morality stage at the age of 5 to 10

years old. During this stage, children between this age range

are listening to elder’s guidance such as their parents,

teacher and grandparents (Mazarin, 2003). Furthermore, they

tend to trust elder’s moral judgment and obey every rules that

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given by the elders at this stage. This is because most of the

children understand that if they breaking the rules will lead

to bad consequences and will be punished by authority

(Dombeck, 2010). On the other hand, Piaget found that

autonomous morality is begins to enter at the age of 10 years

old. However, children at this stage tend to comprehend the

rule is made by people and can be negotiate. During this age

of moral development, children value fairness and view

morality as a social contrast in which the rules have to be

obeyed in order to be liked (Dombeck, 2010).

There are six stages of Kohlberg’s theory of moral

development and classified into three levels which is a

preconvention level, conventional level and post conventional

level. According to Kohlberg, the first level preconvention

involves 2 stages and is the only level focus on children

which is most nine years old and younger. Stage 1 which is

obedient and punishment, children views rules as unchanged and

during this stage they will obey and follow the rules in order

to avoid punish by the elders or authority (Cherry, 2014).

Next, following by stage 2 is individualism and exchange,

which children’s moral behavior is acting in one own interest.

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They will follow those rules if they know the rules will

benefit them.

Chapter 2 Background

The kindergarten that we had visited to is QE

kindergarten. It is located at 326-328, Lorong Pala 11, Taman

Teluk Intan, 36000 Teluk Intan, Perak. The name of QE

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kindergarten is originated from the first alphabet of “Quality

Education”. The principal of the kindergarten is Lee Siew

Luan. The philosophy of the kindergarten is to provide the

students with high quality education and prepare them to

become a better generation in the future. Now, the

kindergarten has more than 200 students from age 4 to 6 and 20

teachers which are under their own management. The teachers

are assigned as class teachers and also the subject teachers

while the students are distributed into 3 or 4 classes with

each 20 students in each. However, in order to make sure that

every class of students receives same knowledge from the same

teacher, they actually assign the same subject teacher in to 4

different classes so that the knowledge that they received is

the same.

The kindergarten uses mix approach in their teaching and

syllabus arrangement. They take up some ideas from Singapore

syllabus and add on their own ideas. Some of the textbooks

that they are using are imported from Singapore while others

are chosen from local publication. According to the principal,

the teaching method in Malaysia is more traditional and fewer

advances compared to other developed country. Although they

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try to mix their syllabus with other country, they still have

to follow the norm and culture of Malaysia especially the

government policy. For example, the students in kindergarten

who live in Taiwan are not suggested to use pen but Malaysian

do. So instead of just blindly follow on what other

kindergarten in different countries do, so they actually

invent some sources and combine it with the culture or

education policy of Malaysia. Therefore, the students who are

in age 4 actually just learn something that are more basic

such as recognizing the color and shape of the object and able

to pronounce the exact adjectives of the object. The syllabus

becomes higher in level as the children’s age increases. They

will learn some basic mathematics and also phoenix in English

and Malay language when they are in age 5 and tougher syllabus

when they are 6 years old. The teachers actually attempt to

teach what the students should learn in that particular stage

and prepare them to the next stage at the end of the year.

However, they will also help students to revise what they

learned in previous year when they move to another stage.

In addition, one of the special teaching methods applied

in the kindergarten is “go with theme”. For instance, the

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students are giving with a simple word like “human” and the

teachers will guide them to link to another aspect such as

brain, fingers, hand and so on. This method actually aimed to

assist the student to develop the concept and generation of

ideas. According to the principal, the most important thing

to teach to the students is about the core value and practical

life skills. She mentioned that there is one research in

United States stated that there are some careers going to

disappear in next 10 years and the new careers that going to

exist is infinity. Therefore, instead of preparing the

students into a particular knowledge or specific domain, the

core value or practical life skills such as how to face and

solve problem in different situation is the most vital

knowledge to students. At the end of interview, she also

mentioned that they are actually going to launch a new

kindergarten in next month. In the new kindergarten, they

actually provide the learning corner to the students which

divided into 4 domains which including cognitive,

constructive, language and practical life learning. For

instance, they will teach the students to tie the shoelace at

the practical life learning corner. Each study corner will

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have real object that assist in learning and also guided by

the teacher. This new invention aims to teach the students to

increase their self-learning skills, self-management skills,

problem solving skills and also self-esteem or confident level

in solving problem.

Chapter 3 Description of Proposed Activity

Personality Development

Activity: Keeping pets in school classroom and let children

interact with them.

Objective: To promote the personality development of children

trough the interaction with companion animal.

Materials used: Teachers can keep some animals like dog, cat,

bird, rabbit, hamster or fish in the school classroom.

Steps and duration: At first, teachers can demonstrate on how

to praise, how to touch gently, and how to speak softly to the

pets and then let the children practice it under the

monitoring of teacher. Teachers can correct the children if

they do not treat the pets in a proper way and explain to

them. The duration can be 30 minutes once in a week.

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Learning outcome: The interaction between children and the

companion animal helps children become more responsible, more

social and develops their characters (Endenburg & Lith, 2011).

After this activity, the trait of empathy, which defined as

the child’s ability to understand how someone else feels, will

be developed gradually in children. By interacting with pets

that are totally dependent on the owner, children learn to

understand the feelings and needs of animals and those of

fellow human beings from an early age (Endenburg & Baarda,

n.d.).

The implication of the activity on children’s personality

development:

According to child psychologist name Boris Levinson, a

child who is exposed to the emotional experiences inherent in

playing with a pet is giving many learning opportunities that

are essential to wholesome personality development (Hamer &

Hevel, 2007). The presence of animals can alter children’s

attitudes toward themselves and their ability to relate to

others. Animals such as dog, cat and bird can help in

facilitating social and verbal interactions among children. As

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a result, children tend to be easygoing, socially competent

and also extroverted.

Pets do not always do what a child wants and this creates

frustration for the child. However, it opens an opportunity

for parents and teachers to teach tolerance, respect, and

patience by showing proper ways to interact with pets. In the

relationship between children and pets, children learn to

treat pets with kindness, caring, patience and also learn

invaluable lessons in how to treat people at the same time.

Moreover, the bonding and strong relationship between

pets and children can help children with the development of

compassion and empathy as well. Children’s empathy with

animals, such as the ability to perceive their needs, seems to

have a transfer effect to empathy with people (Endenburg &

Lith, 2011). Empathy is a basis for the development of social

intelligence, therefore social interactions between children

and other people will be enhanced. Empathy also tends to

increase prosocial behaviour and develop trait of altruism in

children. The empathy–altruism hypothesis states that feelings

of empathy for another person produce an altruistic motivation

to increase that person’s welfare.

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Other supported points: The main reason that I propose this

activity is that QE kindergarten has less focus on children

personality development especially empathy. Empathy should be

developed during childhood as it can enhance the development

of other area. Other than personality development,

interactions with pets can also promote development in other

aspects like social, emotional and cognitive development.

Furthermore, some children may have less opportunity to

interact with pets as they do not have pets at home.

Therefore, keeping pets at school classroom will provide the

opportunity for the children to interact and build

relationship with the companion animal.

Moral Development

Activity: Telling stories with moral lessons and incorporate

with narrative approach.

Objective: According to Oladipo (2009), moral development had

become one of the significant factors that leads to the

solution of the social problems which is increasing in current

society, with the condition that, various social institutions

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should collaborate well in putting in effort rather than

solely the responsibility of a single party. There are many

ways that can be conducted to educate children and encourage

them to behave morally and to abide to the social norms and

one of them is to tell stories which contain moral lessons.

Therefore, in order to develop and enhance the moral

development of children since early childhood through moral

stories, which can be conducted by both parents and

kindergarten teachers.

Materials required: Stories that contain moral values.

Steps and duration: First of all, teachers are recommended to

select stories that can convey moral values and simple, so

that the language level is congruent to the children’s

understanding and is able to retain their attention. Teachers

can tell stories daily or weekly or once in a while. They can

also involve the narrative approach whereby children will be

the story-teller. These kids are required to tell the moral

deeds that they have experienced and share it among their

friends. If they reveal behavior that is less appropriate,

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teachers can attempt to explain and give advices which can

improve their future behavior.

Learning outcomes: Stories help to stimulate children’s

imagination and encourage them to relate the stories to real

life events or social values in a more meaningful way (Mona,

2012). Therefore, children are able to form better pictures

of positive, moral behavior and character of the ‘hero’, and

view them as models.

Implications:

In Indonesia and Thailand, moral education is perceived

as the integration of religious and citizenship education as

well as character development (Rahim and Rahiem, 2012;

Singsuriya, Angsumalin and Worapong, 2014). However, to

develop morally, children should be taught to understand the

meaning underlying a good behavior, rather than just

memorizing the rules written in the holy book (Rahim and

Rahiem, 2012). To make changes on this matter, stories were

suggested to be an effective component to deliver moral

lessons to the children and enable them to have a better

comprehension of the reasons of good and bad behaviors in a

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more interesting manner. According to Mona (2012), stories can

assist children to perceive and imagine the real world in a

meaningful way and to teach and transmit the moral lessons.

Besides, the characters in the stories enable children to

construct better mental images of the ‘good person’ and

identify with them which then view them as the role model of

their behavior to help constructing positive personality

(Mona, 2012).

Moreover, the activity of story-telling can as well be

incorporated with narrative approach, in which an individual

will construct stories of him or herself and share among

others (Singsuriya et al, 2014). Through this approach, a

person can review their moral experiences and thereby being

able to assess his or her behavior in the past, the

consequences of their actions, and on the other hand, the

listeners will have an opportunity to learn from the narrator

(Singsuriya et al, 2014). For children who are presenting

their stories, teachers can provide feedbacks about their

literature and allow them to have a more rounded perception of

their experiences in a more pleasurable approach.

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This activity is proposed because QE Kindergarten focuses

more on cognitive, physical and social development matters,

and seldom practises the culture of teaching moral values. By

carrying out this activity, moral development of the young

children can be improved in a more leisure way.

Chapter 4: Reflection

Reflection (Kitty Tiong Kong Ding)

This visit had been a particular and special one for me

as we got to have the opportunity to interact with those

little precious kids. In fact, it had been worries for us

before visiting the kindergarten, especially on the activities

to be conducted and the values to be delivered. For me, child

is just like a blank paper, in which is filled by experiences

with caregivers, people around and environment. Thus, every

single words spoken and messages delivered must be taken into

considerations as they are just 6 years old kids, who might

“absorb” whatever information had been taught without further

mental processing. So, it is important for us to make sure the

values delivered are accurately received by those kids so that

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they can really learn something from those activities, instead

of misleading them. For example, we did conducted role-play

activities, in which children can learn to think from other

perspectives. During the activities, we told them about the

situation and asked about the actions to be taken, and thus,

according to the answers given, we explained to them about the

consequences and let the children to decide what to do next.

It was an interesting process as children might throw out

“innocent” answers, which somehow make people speechless, but

it was really gratifying when they really understood the

values delivered and instead, explained it to us like little

adults. This might be contributed by the syllabus offered in

the kindergarten as it combines Malaysia’s teaching method

with other country, and this can help the kids to think

broadly instead of thinking inside the box.

In short, dealing with kids is not an easy job and it

really requires us to be patient and creative as their

attention might be easily drawn away. No matter how, it was a

wonderful experience for me.

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Reflection (Hee Wen Hui)

During the visitation to the QE kindergarten on 16th

November 2014, I have learned a lot especially when conducting

activities with the students of 6 years old. First of all,

compared to the other group, we are not only interviewing the

principal, but preparing some activities that are interesting

and bring moral values to the children. For example, one of

the activities was we will give one social situation to 3 or 4

students and ask them to act out. After the act we gave the

student audience time to think and ponder about how they would

react if they were in that situation and based on their

answers we explained the moral value that we meant for them to

learn and practice. The activities that we prepared runs very

smoothly, we were able to get majority of the students

involved in every activity, most importantly the children

thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We were able to interact and

connect with the students in a way that I have never

experienced before. Personally I am really happy and satisfied

with our visit.

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In my opinion, I feel that QE kindergarten has

implemented an effective teaching method. I think that their

teaching methods are quite good in sense that they are more

emphasizing on practical rather than theoretical. Teachers of

QE kindergarten will teach students about the moral value and

practical life skill so students are able to handle their own

problem when they face difficulties. Furthermore, they made

their own books in which they used to teach the students with.

The book was written based on the guideline that given by the

Malaysia government and Singapore pre-school syllabus. It is a

good attempt to make sure that students will really understand

the teacher’s syllabus and in the long run develop the mental

faculties of their students.

Reflection: Chia Fooi Xin

The experience of visiting to the QE kindergarten is very

special and interesting. The difference between the

kindergartens that we visited with other group is that their

principal requested us to prepare some activities to their

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students. Carry up activities for kindergarten’s children are

not easy as the activity have to be more interesting,

attractive, meaningful and safe to the students. Furthermore,

we have to consider on their perspective to view the world and

think what they might think and act during that situation.

However, I felt satisfied when the students actually enjoy the

activities prepared.

After interview the principal regarding to the teaching

method of the kindergarten, I think their teaching method is

quite effective and efficient. Nowadays, most of the parents

are more concern about the academic achievement of their

children. However, teaching the core value and some practical

life skill to students actually can assist them not only excel

in the academic aspect but also the ways to cope with

difficulties in the society. The interesting and more

practical teaching methods also help students to better apply

their knowledge in their life. The mix approach that combining

Malaysia’s teaching method with other country also can enhance

and improve the quality of education.

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Moreover, I think that the teaching method that we

proposed is quite applicable and effective to the

kindergarten. According to the principal, they do not give any

moral exercise book to the students as they think that

application is the most important things. Therefore,

storytelling actually can instill some moral value to the

students in more pleasurable way. Other than that, the

students also can easily absorb, apply and share what that

learn through the real life example. In sum, storytelling

activity is much more useful than other normal teaching

method.

Chapter 4 Students’ Reflection (Teoh Ke Pei)

I gained memorable and invaluable experience during the

visitation to QE kindergarten. We conducted some small

activities to 80 children who are 6 years old. I handled one

group of children which consisted of 20 of them with the

assistance of a teacher there. Actually handling 20 children

was not that easy as what I thought before as it was hard to

control them and to get their attention all the times. I did

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learn something during the process of interacting with the

children like how to communicate with them, how to get their

attention and cooperation and so on. I felt happy throughout

the whole process and enjoyed it.

In my opinion, the syllabus and the teaching methods used

in the centre are good, effective and comprehensive. The

centre put a lot of effort in making high quality and high

standard syllabus by combining local and other countries’

syllabus. I think that it helps in fully developing children’s

intelligence and preparing them a strong foundation before

entering primary school. Moreover, I think that the teaching

method which calls “go with theme” is very appropriate to

children in learning process as they manage to develop the

concept well and remember them quickly and easily.

I think that the activities that we proposed will be

helpful in the moral and personality development of children.

The story-telling activity is good and effective in conveying

the moral values and its importance to practice in life to the

children in an interesting way. The moral values will be

implanted in children mind when they constructing the image of

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a good person in their mind according to the good characters

in stories and view them as the role model. While the activity

of keeping pets in school classroom and let children

interacting with them will definitely enhance children’s

personality development as through the interaction with pets,

children tend to develop the traits of caring, kind, empathy

and also be more sociable.

Reflection (Pek Jie Shiz):

After visiting QE Kindergarten, I realized that the

syllabus provided to the children is good enough to get them

prepared to enter primary school. The teachers teach all the

core subjects and put in effort to ensure that the children

have well-established foundation to enter a new stage in their

life. The syllabus and teaching methods of other kindergarten

in other countries are also used as references to help

increase the level of the children’s learning.

Other than focusing on academic matters, the kindergarten

also takes note of physical, social development and etc. They

train students to dance and sing to prepare them for their

annual concert, which can help in physical development and

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also reveal their potential or talents. In my opinion, I think

that the activity that we proposed will be definitely very

helpful to enhance the children’s moral and personality

development. This story-telling activity can also be conducted

by teachers, using stories that contain moral values and can

be improved by involving the narrative approach which require

children tell their experiences and to review the moral

behaviors that had been done and also share it among their

friends. Besides, allowing children to have more interaction

with animals or pets is one of the ways that encourages

responsible, loving and patient personality.

During our visitation, we had conducted a few activities

for the children, which also involve the assistance of the

teachers. From my observation throughout the activities, I

feel that the way of teaching or taking care of the children

can be more open and free, instead of restricting their

behaviors which do not cause any harm. For instance, in one of

the activities that we had conducted, some children attempt to

solve the ‘task’ by using different ways but were stopped by

their teachers. In my opinion, this can in fact restrict the

creativity of the children.

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