Impact of Personal Hygiene Education Based on Social Learning Theory on Preschool Children

Preschool education holds immense significance during early childhood development as it equips children with vital knowledge, skills, and a strong groundwork for lifelong learning and behavior. In this educational process, social learning theory helps explain how small children develop behavior patterns. The purpose of this study was to implement a personal hygiene education program based on social learning theory and subsequently to assess its effectiveness. Our experiment employs a pre-test, post-test, control group experimental design. The target population comprised 65 kindergartners between the ages of 5 and 6 in the central district of Zonguldak Province, Turkey. Data collection for the study was sourced from the Personal Information Form, Health Education Scale for Preschool Children, and Control List for Children's Oral and Dental Health. After personal hygiene training, both the control and intervention groups showed an increase in scale scores, while the increase in hand washing and oral dental health scores was significantly higher for the intervention group. These results indicate that the systematic, effective implementation of preschool education yields improvements in the child's existing skills across all developmental domains while also introducing new skills. Personal hygiene, which is encouraged to be practiced both at home and school, is an observable behavior that signifies this sort of developmental progress.