The purpose of this study was to examine how the sociability and problem-solving ability of children in their first year in elementary school were affected by self-expression training that aimed at helping thei express their ideas, feelings, opinion, ...
The purpose of this study was to examine how the sociability and problem-solving ability of children in their first year in elementary school were affected by self-expression training that aimed at helping thei express their ideas, feelings, opinion, position, rights or assertions through language or behavior in a manner to respect the personality and rights of other people.
The research questions were posed as follows :
1. Does a group that gets self-expression training have a better ability to express themselves than a control group that doesn't?
2. Does a group that gets self-expression training make a greater progress in problem-solving ability than a control group that doesn't?
The subjects in this study were 20 children in their third year from elementary school in Dae-jeon, who included 10 boys and 10 girls. After an experimental group and a control group were organized with five boys and five girls each, the experimental group underwent self-expression training under the guidance of this researcher. That program was conducted 10 timesfor 5 weeks, two times a week, and 40~50 minutes each. The program used in this study were Sin wan-soo(1999)'s and Yu tae-young(2001)'s
The instrument used in this study were Lee Seong-hyeon(1997)'s modified version of Rakos & Schroeder(1979)'s self-expression scale. and Park Hui-suk(1995)'s MEPS test was modified by this researcher to assess an ability to handle interpersonal problems.
For data analysis, mean and standard deviation were calculated to see if there were any changes after the experiment. Besides, t-test was carried out and covariance analysis was implemented as occasion demanded.
The brief findings of this study were as below:
First, the experimental group that trained for self-expression showed a more significant change in self-expression ability than the control group that didn't.
The gender made no significant difference to every subfactor and total scores, but both boys and girls improved in self-expression ability.
Second, the experimental group that trained for self-expression made a more significant development in problem-solving ability that the control group that didn't. But there appeared no difference caused by gender.
The above-mentioned findings suggested that every child who got self-expression training showed an improvement in self-expression and problem-solving ability. Therefore, self-expression training could be said as one of the crucial learning activities to make problem-solving ability better.