A Study on the Effect of the Social Skill Education on the Academic Self Respect and Problem Solving Skills of the Pre-School Children *

The study was conducted to determine the effect of the Social Skills Education Program applied to the preschool children in the ages of 48 to 60 months on their academic self-respect and problem solving skills. The study had a single group with the pretest-posttest experimental model. The study group consisted of 16 preschool children in the ages of 48 to 60 months. Since there was no other group with equivalent qualities as the experiment group, the study was planned in a single group experimental model. “Personal Information Form, Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale and Academic Self Respect Scale were used as the data collection tools. In the study, Social Skill Education Program was applied to the children for two days a week during 14 weeks. The problem solving and academic self-respect levels of children were measured before and after the program. As a result of the analyses, a significant difference (p<0.05) was determined in favor of posttest between the scores of children before and after the Social Skill Education Program. Upon the permanence test, it was concluded that the Social Skill Education Program was permanent.


INTRODUCTION
Preschool stage is the period in which the children experience socialization and the form the basis of their social relations regarding with their future life. In this period, the children form the basis of their later social life as well as they begin to learn about how interpersonal relations and social rules are. Social development and getting social skills of children support growing as their showing the behaviors that they are expected to do by society (Çubukçu & Gültekin 2006).
The matter of how the support should be for having social skills during development stage is tried to be expounded by many theorists. As to Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, the children's cognitive development is to be developed through interactions with the persons around their and with relations between them (Gülay, 2004). According to Vygotsky, as the child's cognitive development is to be improved up to 2 years old through aging, after the age of 2, it is progressed by interactions with specifications and cultural structures of the society in which they live. According to Vygotsky, children acquire social and cognitive skills under the guidance of more skillful children or their parents or teachers in their environment (Özbey, 2009). In regard with Erikson's physiological development theory, the first two years of the child are very important for the child's personality formation. Erikson declares that he encountered 8 critical stages which establish the basis of each one's personality as well as forming and changing their personalities and raise up over one another (Rosenthal, Gurney & Moore, 1981). In the stage between 1 year and 3 years old and called as "Autonomy versus Shame/Douobt", if the children acting freely according to their wishes are not restricted and punished their exhibited behaviors, they can act independently; the unsupported and restricted children lack the ability to act independently and develop feelings of doubt and shame. This situation is described as a condition that prevents the socialization of the child. Social Learning Theory developed by Bandura explains the formation of learning based on the concepts of modeling, observation and imitation. According to this theory, children acquire their first social behaviors through their interactions and observations with adults around them. The Social Ecology Theory focuses on the role of different environments in which children are involved in their socialization. The child acquires social skills as a result of the interactions between the child's family and school (Özbey, 2009).
Social skills are the skills such as planning, taking responsibility, assertiveness skills, decision making, emotion-oriented skills, self-management, peer relationships, communication and problemsolving. Children with good social skills succeed in helping people around them, building good relationships, working and sharing with people they live with; children who are not good enough in terms of social skills experience adaptation problems at home and at school; and face many problems with healthy communication with the people around them, social relations, academic and professional life (Arı, Çağdaş & Seçer, 2002). From the moment the child is born, the child's interaction with his/her social environment starts to increase by his/her interaction with the mother or the person taking care of him / her. The child has many experiences through social interactions and as these experiences increase, so does the child's perception of his or her environment. The communication and interactions that the child establishes with the people around him allow the child to recognize his own self as well as socialize. Self is a structure acquired through maturation and socialization and gained as a result of communication with living and environment. As the child perceives the environment, he/she assimilates the appropriate experiences and changes the inappropriate ones to suit the self-concept and makes them most important determinant of behavior (Kenç & Oktay, 2002).
Self-respect is the state of admiring that person gains as a result of self-evaluation. Self-respect is a positive emotional situation making the person trust herself/himself and feel to be worthy of being loves and liked. The self-respect of child contains of some factors being related with each other. As a result of their study on self-respect, Shavelson, Hubner and Stanton categorize the self-respect in two divisions, academic self-respect and nonacademic self-respect. As the academic self-respect concept is divided to subdivisions such as Science, English and Mathematics; the nonacademic self-respect concept is divided into emotional, social and physical selves. Academic self-respect is defined as the emotion of personal ability and academic performance (Smith, Sapp, Farrell & Johnson 1998). Smith and Sapp (1998) found that academic performance of the child increases as the level of academic selfrespect goes up. In the study of Johnson and Taylor, it is emphasized that interactions based on cooperation with peers in learning environment has an effect on academic self-respect (as cited in Walker, 2006). Children's social emotional adjustment is directly related to their academic selfrespect. Studies have shown that children with high self-respect are more successful in interpersonal relationships (Warash & Markstrom, 2001); it was found that children with low academic self-respect had higher levels of asocial behaviors such as disliking to be in social settings and avoiding the tasks assigned to them (Kaytez & Kadan, 2016). As having pre-school education, children begin an academic process. The child's social emotional adjustment and social skills are also closely related to academic self-respect. In research, it is seen that children having high self-respect are socially compatible, independent, creative, self-confident, successful and healthy, able to express their ideas easily (Brown & Mann, 1991;Warash & Markstrom, 2001) children having low academic self-respect have higher levels of asocial behaviors such as dominance of the idea that their ideas will not be accepted, disliking to be in social environments and avoiding the tasks assigned to them (Kaytez & Kadan, 2016).
All social behaviors of the individual develop and is to be formed in the process of socialization. As the perception and degree of interpersonal interactions of children are different, the forming and development levels of self-respect as well as their approach to the problems encountered are different. The children face their first interpersonal problems at preschool which they begin to socialize. As some of children fail, some of them refer to effective solutions. When the children try to come through these problems, they benefit from their social skills and their interpersonal problem solving capacity giving them the opportunity to live concordantly and effectively (Spence, 2003, s. 84). The basis of social adaptation theories depends on child's skills to deal with the problems in social relations (Koruklu & Yılmaz, 2010). Children solve the problems they encounter in their social environments by taking advantage of their problem solving capacity. In order to solve the problem, the child should first determine the existence of the problem, consider the possible alternative ways for the solution of the problem and evaluate the possible results of the alternatives and attempt to solve the problem (Anlıak & Dinçer, 2005, p. 123).
Problem solving skills, which are very important in supporting the social development of children, are defined as preventing conflicts in social life, producing strategies that can be useful for self-development and applying these strategies (Berk, 2013). Children with problem-solving skills are able to establish healthy relationships with their friends, understand the emotions of the people around them, and look at events from the perspective of others.Children being lack of experience to contribute to their social development do not have sufficient level of self-confidence and self-discipline development as well as the skills of problem solving and dealing with these problems (Uysal & Kaya-Balkan, 2015). Putallaz and Gottman (1981) stated that lack of social skills or inadequacy causes various problematic behaviors such as aggression, tendency to crime and failing to be successful at school; Beyazkürk, Anlıak and Dinçer (2007) found that children who do not have sufficient social skills exhibit aggressive behaviors and are less accepted by their peers. In addition, social behaviors that are not learned in time disrupt the social adaptation of children and cause the child to exhibit undesired behaviors. In the studies, it was found that children who do not have sufficient social skills have high problem behavior levels and they are children who cannot solve problems (Özbey, 2009).
For children, learning social skills as starting at preschool stage is very important to sustain healthy social relations in their further life stages. In the studies investigating the social skills education programs, it was found that the applied programs had positive results for children in many ways. It was found that school non-compliance problems, substance and alcohol use, self -harm and harming the others, vandalism, aggressive behaviors and stress symptoms were seen less at children in the program groups (Kiselica, Baker, Thomas & Reedy, 1994). The study by Kılıç and Güngör Aytar (2017) found that the Social Skill Education Program had positive effects on the social skills of the children participated in the program. Avcıoğlu (2004) states that the social skills learning program is effective on children's social skills; Ekinci-Vural (2006) found that the family participation social skills program had a positive effect on the development of children's social skills and Yukay (2006) found that the social skills education program was effective in developing the peer relationships of children. In his study (2008), Dereli (2008) says the social skills training program has a positive effect on social problem solving skills of 6-year-old children; Günindi (2010) and Durualp and Aral (2010) stated that social adaptation skills training program has a positive effect on children's social adaptation skills; Webster-Stratton and Reid (2004), Teglasi and Rothman (2001), in their studies, they found that social skills programs applied to children have a significant effect on gaining behavior control and decreasing aggressive behaviors of these children. Özbey (2009) found that the social skills training program had an effect on improving children's social skills and reducing their problematic behaviors. In their study, Tagay, Baydan and Voltan Acar (2010) found that social skills program (Blocks) had a significant effect on the social skill levels of secondary school students. Frey, Nolen, Edstrom and Hirschstein (2005) stated that there was a decrease in the level of aggressive behavior of children through social skills intervention program. In addition to the education programs that support social emotional development applied to children in early childhood, similar education programs are found to support children in many ways. Samur and Deniz (2014) aimed to examine the effects of the values education program that includes social values such as peace, responsibility, sharing and cooperation applied to preschool children on their social emotional development. The study results showed that the post-test scores of children in the experiment group on social trust, school readiness, social emotional development and emotional regulation were higher than that of the children in the control group. Topçu Bilir (2019) found that the life skills program which includes the subdimensions of Healthy and Safe Life (health and safety), Self and Emotional Management (self-awareness and coping with emotions and stress) and Social Life Skills (empathy, communication, interpersonal relationship, problem solving, decision making and critical and creative thinking) on the children aged five significantly increased the life skills of the children.
Social skills development and education in early childhood is of great importance for children to lead a healthier and more positive life. Starting from the preschool period, it is seen that children taking social skills education are at peace with themselves, problem solving and at most self-confident individuals (Jamison Kristen, Forston & Stanton Chapman, 2012). Having social skills at adequate levels is essential for success in both social and academic relationships. As developing social skills healthily improves academic skills, being successful, establishing positive relations with the environment and thus producing solutions to the problems they face;inadequate social skills of children cause academic failures in children, they have difficulty in solving the problems they face and exhibit various problem behaviors (Elksinin & Elksinin, 1998). For this reason, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the "Social Skills Training Program" on children's academic self-respect and problem solving skills.

METHOD
In the study, the effect of the training program on academic self-respect and problem solving skills of preschool children was measured by applying "Social Skills Training Program". For this reason, one group pretest posttest control group quasi-experimental design was used. In this model being one of the pre-experiment models, the acceptance of independent variables is applied to a randomly chosen group (Karasar, 2014).

Data Collection Methods
In this study, Personal Information Form, Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale and Academic Self-Respect Scale were used as data collection methods.

1. Personal Information Form
Personal Information Form includes subjects for learning the information of the children's demographic specifications. They were filled up by the teachers in accordance with the information obtained from the personal files of children. Form contains information about child's gender and age.

Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale
The scale which was formed by Özdil (2008) to determine the children's problem solving levels comprises two sub-dimensions as Destructive Problem Solving and Constructive Problem Solving. Before forming the scale, Özdil (2008) determined the interpersonal problems which may be occurred by asking the preschool teachers to give at least 10 examples of interpersonal problem and examining examples in the literature of preschool children's conflict with each other that they encounter or they may during their activities. The scale having 72 items was presented to 5 specialists and number of items was decreased to 53 according to their opinions. The scale having two sub-dimensions as Destructive Problem Solving and Constructive Problem Solving is a kind of 4 point Likert scale. The choices of items are graded as "extremely unlikely", "some likely", likely", "very likely". Teachers filled up the scale by making observations for each child separately three times at two-week intervals. After data is applied to SPSS packet program, the result is obtained by averaging these three observations. As a result of factor analysis made for the scale validity, it is found that the subdimension of Destructive Problem Solving consists of 16 items. The loads of items change between 0902 and 0.556 and that sub-dimension explains 42% of total variance. On the other hand, there are 8 items in sub-dimension called as Constructive Problem Solving and loads of items change between 0.749 and 0.584 and that sub-dimension explains 15% of total variance. Özdil (2008) found that the Cronbach Alhpa internal consistency coefficient is 0.95 for Destructive Problem Solving subdimension, and 0.83 for Constructive Problem Solving sub-dimension. Cronbach Alhpa reliability coefficients of Problem Solving Scale were calculated again for this study and found that it was 0.93 for Destructive Problem Solving sub-dimension, and 0.88 for Constructive Problem Solving subdimension. If the scores of Destructive Problem Solving sub-dimension are high then it means child solves the problems in a negative manner; if the scores of Constructive Problem Solving subdimension are high then it means child solves the problem in a positive, in other words, in a constructive method. Cevher and Buluş (2006) developed "Academic Self-Respect Scale" in order to measure the academic self-respect of 5-6 aged children attending to preschool by benefiting from Behavioral Academic Self-Respect Scale developed by Coopersmith ve Gilbert (1982) and Evaluation Inventory advanced by Hamachek (1995). The choices of the 5 point likert scale are graduated as "always", "often", "sometimes", "rarely", and "never". The choices of items were translated to Turkish by Cevher and Buluş and 3 experts were consulted. Just one scale was filled up by teachers for each child.

3. Academic Self-Respect Scale
The factor structure of the scale was analyzed by the principal-component method and a basic factor having eigenvalues of 11.89 was found, representing 54.08% of the total variance. For the other two factors, eigenvalues were found at 1.45 and 1.07. It was observed that all items gathered at the main factor. In the internal consistency reliability analysis of the scale, Cronbach Alpha was found to be 0.95. For reliability, two half test reliability analyzes were performed; The reliability coefficient for the first half of the test was 0.90; the second half coefficient was 0.93; Spearman Brown correlation coefficient between two halves was 0.86 and Guttman Split-Half reliability coefficient was 0.92. It was determined from the results that both halves of the test measured the same feature. The total number of items of the scale was 22 and the score range was 22 -110. The low scores obtained from the scale indicated that academic self-respect was low; high scores meant that academic self-respect was high. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.93 for this study.

4. The appliance process of the program
Socail Skill Training Program was developed by Özbey (2009). During the program development process, foreign preschool education programs prepared for acquiring social skills and dealing with problematic behaviors were examined and methods and techniques used in used in education programs such as music, drama, painting, story, cooperation, etc. were considered. While preparing the activities, the gains and indicators for social, emotional, cognitive, language, psychomotor development areas and self-care skills in the Preschool Education Program of the Ministry of National Education were selected. The program consists of 74 social activities integrated with Music, Art, Story, Play, Turkish, Science-Nature, Drama activities. The program was revised by Özbey by taking into consideration the gains and indicators, learning process and other program features to support the social skills in the renewed Preschool Education Program 2013; the expert opinion was achieved and the program was finalized in that way.
Social skills supported in the program comprise of Understanding and expressing his / herself and others' feelings and telling the reasons, Empathy, Realizing his / her mistake and correcting it, Finding solutions to problems in different situations, Anger control, Respecting differences, Respecting the rights of others, Interpersonal relations, Responsibility, Sharing, Social harmony, Dealing with situations such as shyness and prudency etc., and Themes related to social skills. These relevant social skills were implicated in stories and the social skills discussed in each story were supported by songs. Songs consists of themes such as friendship, anger control, shyness and prudency and so on. After each story, songs are studied by the support of musical instruments. Lyrics support social skills and offer a suggestion for anger control. Therefore, when combined with the story, it provides more permanent learning in children. The stories and songs were reinforced with art, drama and play activities. Before applying the Social Skills Education Program, permission were took from Özbey (2009). Before conducting the Social Skills Education Program, Academic Self-Respect Scale was used to measure the children's academic self-respect levels and Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale was used to measure their problem solving skills by teachers' filling up the forms for each child separately. After that pre-test, the Social Skills Training Program was conducted 2 days a week for 14 weeks. After the program, Academic Self-Respect Scale and Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale were completed again by teachers in order to measure the effectiveness of the program; and 4 weeks after the end of the program, the retention test was performed.

Data Analysis
Pretest and posttest were carried out to determine the effect of Social Skills Education Program on children's academic self-respect and problem solving skills and Wilcoxon signed rank test was applied to find the difference between the scores of posttest and retention test. And also there indicated descriptive statistics related with pretest-posttest and retention tests.

Social Skills Education / Children's Academic Self-Respect
The results of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between the scores obtained by children participating in social skills education from the Academic Self-Respect Scale before and after the education program are given in Table 1.  Table 1 is examined, it is seen that there is a significant difference between the pre and posttest scores obtained by the children from the Academic Self-Respect Scale (z = -3.52; p <0.05). When the sums of difference scores are taken into consideration, it is seen that the difference is in favor of positive rankings, in other words in favor of posttest. The results of Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between posttest and retention test scores of children as finding whether the effect of social skills education on children's academic self-respect is permanent in the period after the education are given in Table 2.  Table 2 is examined, it is seen that there is a significant difference between retention and posttest scores obtained by children from the Academic Self-Respect Scale (z = -3.41; p <0.05). When the sums of difference scores are taken into consideration, it is seen that the difference is in favor of positive rankings, in other words in favor of retention test.
Descriptive statistics related to pretest-posttest and retention test scores obtained by children from Academic Self-Respect Scale are given in Table 3. When examining the table 3, it is seen that the mean of pretest is 68.93 the mean of posttest 92.62 and the mean of retention test is 100.18. After Social Skills Education, there happened a significant progress in children's academic self-respect. It may be interpreted that this progress increased in the retention test by the use of social skills.

Social Skills Education / Children's Interpersonal Problem Solving Skills
The results of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between the scores obtained by children participating in social skills education from the Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale before and after the education program are given in Table 4. When Table 4 is examined, it is seen that there found no significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores obtained by the children from the Destructive Problem Solving Sub-Scale (z= -.039; p>0.05). But for the Constructive Problem Solving Sub-Scale, it is seen that the difference is in favor of positive rankings, in other words in favor of posttest scores (p<0.05).
The results of Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between posttest and retention test scores of children as finding whether the effect of social skills education on children's interpersonal problem solving skills is permanent in the period after the education are given in Table 5.  Table 5 is examined, it is seen that Social Skills scores of children showed a significant difference at Destructive Problem Solving Sub-Scale in favor of positive rankings, in other words in favor of retention test (z=.-3.302; p<0.05). But for Constructive Problem Solving Sub-Scale, it is seen that there is no significant difference between retention test and posttest scores (z=-.693; p>0.05).
Descriptive statistics related to pretest-posttest and retention test scores obtained by children from Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale are given in Table 6. When Table 6 is examined, the Destructive Problem Solving Sub-Scale scores of children participating in Social Skills Education decreases from pretest (X=25.37)posttest (X=24.93) to retention test (X=19.62).

DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION
According to the results of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between the scores obtained by children participating in social skills education from the Academic Self-Respect Scale before and after the education program, there found a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores in favor of posttest (Table 1) and there is also a significant difference between posttest and retention test scores in favor of retention test (Table 2). The form teachers of the education program expressed their opinion that the children acquired the social skills handled in education program such as sharing, helping, empathy, emotion management and so on and during the process, the practicing level of those social skills got higher. This result supports the idea that social skills education given to children positively affects academic self-respect. Academic selfrespect scores of children continued to increase in retention test. This can be interpreted as the fact that children continue to use the social skills gained during the education program and that these skills contribute positively to increasing their academic self-respect.
As a result of the literature review, academic achievement of children with social skills was found to be higher than other children without social skills. In this context, it is possible to evaluate the acquisition of social skills as the first step of academic success (Choi & Kim, 2003;Danielson & Phelps, 2003). In the studies of Peisner-Feinberg, Burchinal, Clifford, Culkin, Howes, Kagan and Yazejian (2001), the social, emotional and cognitive development of children aged 4-8 were affected positively by the education given in preschool education institutions and it was determined that the effect of the education on the language and academic skills continues in primary school years. Webster-Stratton and Reid (2004) state that social and emotional support of children through social skills education has a significant impact on school attendance and success in their later terms of education process. As a result of determining the effect of social skills on academic achievement through The High Scope Preschool Education Program, which finds the starting point of the failure of socially and emotionally disadvantaged children in schools, it was developed in the United States, in 1962 and started to be applied by Weikart (Weikart & Schweinhart, 2005).
In studies of Uz-Baş and Siyez (2011), they received student opinions about solutions to the conflicts occurred. It was found that children who were accepted by their peers solved their problems with more constructive behaviors; children not accepted by their peers solved in a destructive way by negative methods such as threatening, shouting, beating, etc. Öksüz (2012) found his study of 4th and 5th grade primary school students that the children who are compatible in social relations had higher self-respect and that children had difficulty in achieving social cohesion as their self-respect decreased. In studies of Kaytez and Kadan (2016), it was found that the preschool children having high self-respect solve the problems in a more positive way; in the study of Kayal (2018) which examines the relationship between the self-respect, perceived social support and social skills of roman children being educated between 3 rd and 8 th grades of primary school, the scores of social support perceived by roman children and social skills significantly effects their levels of self-respect. As evaluating all studies totally, it supports the idea which improvement of children's social skills has an effect on academic self-respect as being a basis of academic success.
It is seen that as a result of Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test applied to determine the difference between posttest and retention test scores obtained by children participating in Social Skills Education from Interpersonal Problem Solving Scale in the period before and after the education, there found no significant difference between pretest and posttest scores of Destructive Problem Solving Sub-Dimension Scale, and there is significant difference in favor of positive ranks, in other words posttest scores at Constructive Problem Solving Sub-Dimension Scale (Table 4), and significant difference in favor of positive ranks, retention test at Destructive Problem Solving Sub-Dimension Scale, and found no significant difference between retention and posttest scores at Constructive Problem Solving Sub-Dimension Scale (Table 5). Additionally it also seen that the scores obtained by children attending to Social Skills Education from Destructive Problem Solving Scale decreases gradually from pretestposttest to retention test; however their scores obtained from Constructive Problem Solving Scale pretest-posttest and retention test increase (Table 6).
That result may be interpreted as that we may consider there is a moderate and negative relationship between social skills and problem behaviors (Tozduman Yaralı & Özkan, 2016;Özbey, 2009), so when social skills are to be used continuously overtime it may reduce problematic behaviors assimilated by children. In other saying, assimilation of problematic behaviors by child affects the disappearing process of these behaviors. As the child learns the positive behavior samples he/she may replace with problematic behaviors and begins to practice them, the problematic behaviors disappear as giving way to positive behaviors by the time and slowly. Therefore, studies revealing a moderate and negative relationship between social skill behaviors and problematic behaviors support this research result. As social skills are used, it eliminates problematic behaviors. It was observed that there is a significant decreasing of Constructive Problem Solving Skills of children after social skills education. However, children do not immediately give up their established Destructive Problem Solving behaviors. In order to reduce the Destructive Problem Solving Behaviors, social skills are needed to be used. Hence, there made an interview with the form teacher of the class which the social skills program related with children's problem solving skills was conducted and asked for evaluation of children's problem solving skills. The form teacher stated that the children continued to use the social skills they learned during social skills education both at school and at home and reminded each other about positive behaviors in the process. It was stated that they used expressions about which behavior is correct and how to behave in problem situations and that destructive problem solving behaviors continued to decrease in time. Özbey (2009) and Alisinanoğlu, Özbey and Kesicioğlu (2012) found that after the social skills education given to children, there was an increase in children's social skills and a decrease in their problematic behaviors and the decrease in problematic behaviors continued in the retention test. Özdemir-Topaloğlu (2013) examined the effect on children's peer relationships after social skills education given to children and found that after the program, children improved their positive peer relationships and decreased their negative behaviors towards their peers. Durualp and Aral (2010) found that social skills education increased children's positive social adaptation behaviors and reduced social non-compliance behaviors. Reio, Maciolek, Lyn and Weiss (2002) emphasized that the anxiety and fear increased because of the anxiety of success of children in the programs focused on academic skills and prosocial behaviors decreased; in child-centered programs, they state that problematic behaviors are reduced because all development fields of children are supported. Denham and Weisberg (2005) stated that the support of social emotional development may reduce the problematic behaviors; Hoop, Horn, Mccraw and Meyer (2000) declared that developing interpersonal skills and gaining responsibility feeling is important for child's development of behavior controlling skill and Beland, Anderson, Frank and Mayhew (1991) stated that as prosocial behaviors increase in children, they seek different alternative solutions to problems and reduce problematic behaviors. In the study of Dereli (2008), he applied the social skills education program to the group of children aged six and found that the program contributed to the development of children's social problem solving skills. Dikici Sığırtmaç and Şahin (2009) stated that children who shared their toys with their friends were more active in the classroom and found that children being not accepted to play exhibited undesired behaviors. Based on the results of the research, it may be stated that the social skills acquired positively affect the interpersonal problem solving skills of children. Stevens (2009) found that children with good cognitive flexibility skills were able to solve social problems better and their social skill levels were higher. In the study of Özmen (2013), as long as children's social problem solving skills increase, it was found that there exhibited positive improvement in peer relationships and they showed social behaviors in relations with persons around and their peers, and they may also solve the social problems more healthy; as the problem solving skills decrease their aggressive behaviors increase. In his study which psychosocial development based education program was conducted, Şahin (2015) found that children with high problem solving skills scores had also high emotional intelligence scores. Dinçer, Baş, Teke, Aydın, İpek and Göktaş (2019) conducted a study to assess interpersonal problem-solving skills and friendship relationships of preschool children with the lowest and highest social skills scores, and found a statistically significant negative correlation between the social skills and non-social peer solutions of children. In other words, children with high social skills displayed more positive behaviors in their peer relationship while children with low social skills preferred more negative methods and behaviors in their peer relationships. Umay (2019) found a positive medium level correlation between the problem solving skills and social skills of the children. As considering the results of this research, the following suggestions may be made;  The study was limited to 48-60 months old 16 children who attended to the institution's kindergarten. The effectiveness of the program can be compared by applying the educational program used in this study to children who are in different age groups and who attend different educational institutions.  The effectiveness of the educational program implemented in the study can be compared by applying it simultaneously on children with different cultural characteristics.  As considering the broad impact of social skills programs on development fields, the necessity of education programs that support social emotional development and prevent violence and reduce behavior problems can be highlighted both through in-service education and through different projects.  By attracting attention to the contribution of programs supporting social emotional development to academic achievement, educators may be encouraged to apply that kind of programs.  Education programs may be organized for parents that emphasize that the child, whose social and emotional development is not supported, may experience problems in terms of academic success and solving problems over time.  Seminars and workshops may be organized for educators to teach parents about how to support and develop children's problem-solving skills from birth.  Researchers can examine children's academic self-respect ranks and problem solving skills in their education environment that supports social emotional development.  By conducting studies examining the contribution of the teacher to social emotional development, trainings can be planned to support both professional and personal development in the subjects that teachers need. Acknowledgement This article is a publication of the BAP Project, which is accepted at Gazi University. Project No:72/2018-01. The data used in this study was confirmed by the researchers that it belongs to the years before 2020.