Comparison the Effectiveness of Teaching Choice Theory and Inquiry Philosophy on Social Competence and Goal Orientation of Labor Children

The forced labor for children has negative cognitive, social and emotional consequences. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of teaching choice theory and inquiry philosophy on social competence and goal orientation of labor children.

The current research was a semi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The research population was the labor children of Rasht city in 2021 year. A number of 45 labor children were selected as a sample with using the available sampling method and were assigned in three equal groups by a simple random method with lottery, including the groups of teaching choice theory, teaching inquiry philosophy and control. The first experimental group received 8 sessions of teaching choice theory and the second experimental group received 10 sessions of teaching inquiry philosophy, and the control group did not receive any teaching. The research tools were included questionnaires of social competence (Felner, 2002) and goal orientation (Midgley et al., 1998) and its resulting data were analyzed by methods of univariate and multivariate covariance analysis and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS software.

The findings showed that teaching in both experimental groups in compared the control group led to increase social competence and goal orientation of tendency-mastery, avoidance-mastery, and tendency- performance in labor children (P<0.05), but there was no significance difference between them in the goal orientation of avoidance-performance (P>0.05). Also, there was no significant difference between the experimental groups of teaching choice theory and inquiry philosophy in terms of any of the variables of social competence and goal orientation (P>0.05).

According to the results, to improve the social competence and goal orientation of labor children, it is possible to use the teaching methods of choice theory and inquiry philosophy.