Purpose: Childhood is one of the most important periods in the formation of people’s character which the positive points as an integral part of the human being can be strengthened with a variety of indirect methods. According to this fact, storytelling can be among the attractive methods that are very effective since it arouses emotions and curiosity of the child, and is useful in teaching a variety of concepts, including altruistic behaviors. Accordingly, this study was aimed to determine the effect of storytelling on growing the altruistic feelings and behavior of primary school boys aged 7 to 12 in Kermanshah.
Method: This research is an applied and quasi-experimental study using a pretest-posttest design on an experimental group and a control group. The study population consisted of 20 boys aged 7 to 12 years old in Kermanshah. Since the research was conducted in summer and there was no access to educational facilities, the study sample (who lived in Kermanshah) was selected by using the available sampling method. There were 10 persons in both pre-test and post-test groups. The parents' form of the standard Goodman (1997) altruistic questionnaire was used for pre-test and post-test, and parents of the children responded to these questionnaires by observing their behavior in two phases. Parents were tested in both groups. The experimental group was influenced by the story-reading variable for eight sessions held from August to September 2017 in Imam Ali Public Library in Kermanshah. All eight storybooks were related to children's altruistic behavior. At the end of the intervention, the parents of both groups completed the post-test. To determine the effects of storytelling on altruism in Kermanshah boys Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests were used.
Findings: Descriptive data showed that the level of altruism of boys aged 7 to 12-year-old is above average and desirable. Furthermore, the findings of statistical tests indicated that storytelling sessions increased the altruism of children. The difference between the pre-test of the control and experimental groups was not significant, but the post-test altruism level of the experimental group increased compared to the control group, which suggests that the storytelling intervention increased altruism in the Kermanshahi boys under study.
Originality/value: For the first time, the present study experimentally showed that storytelling increases the altruistic sense of 7 to 12-year-old boys. This finding demonstrates the applicability of storytelling in educating children and solving their problems and suggests that storytelling should be used in educational and clinical settings as an optimal entertaining teaching method.