As the necessity of early childhood traffic safety education was accentuated, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of dramatic play and drawing programs geared toward providing traffic safety education, as dramatic play and drawing see...
As the necessity of early childhood traffic safety education was accentuated, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of dramatic play and drawing programs geared toward providing traffic safety education, as dramatic play and drawing seemed to be appropriate as a way to offer that education.
The research questions were posed as below:
1. Does a traffic safety education program through dramatic play enhance the knowledge of young children on traffic safety and their relevant problem-solving skills?
2. Does a traffic safety education program through drawing improve the knowledge of young children on traffic safety and their relevant problem-solving skills?
3. Are there any differences between a dramatic play group and a drawing group in improved traffic safety knowledge and relevant problem-solving skills?
The subjects in this study were 34 young children who were at the age of five in Western age and attended K daycare center in the city of Masan. A dramatic play group and a drawing group were organized with 17 children each.
One instrument used to assess their knowledge on traffic safety was prepared based on Park Hee-jun(2002)'s Preschooler Traffic Safety Knowledge Inventory, and the other used to evaluate their problem-solving skills consisted of three segments, which was grounded in Gwak Eun-bok(2000)'s revised version of Scott's Problem-Solving Inventory.
As for research design, both groups took a pretest, and then the dramatic play group participated in a traffic safety education program by giving a play, and the drawing group took part in a traffic safety education program by drawing a picture. Both groups took a posttest to determine the effects of the two programs.
The experiment was conducted eight times for four weeks, twice a week. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS 12.0 program. To look for any changes after the experiment, paired-samples t-test was utilized, and independent-samples t-test was implemented to see if there was any intergroup gap.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, the dramatic play-based traffic safety education program was effective in improving the traffic safety knowledge and problem-solving skills of the young children. They underwent a positive change in all the subareas including safety against pedestrians, safety against automobiles, and safety against rides.
Second, the drawing-based traffic safety education program had a good effect on boosting the traffic safety knowledge and problem-solving skills of the preschoolers. They showed a positive change in every subarea involving safety against pedestrians, safety against automobiles and safety against rides.
Third, both programs contributed to improving the traffic safety knowledge and problem-solving skills of the young children. There was no significant intergroup gap in traffic safety knowledge, but they were significantly different from each other in relevant problem-solving skills. Among the subareas of traffic safety knowledge, the drawing group made better progress in safety knowledge against automobiles. And among the subareas of relevant problem-solving skills, the dramatic play group showed better improvement in safety against pedestrians and automobiles.
Given the findings of the study, the dramatic play-based and drawing-based traffic safety education programs are expected to boost the traffic safety knowledge and problem-solving skills of preschoolers in real life, and more programs should be developed and applied to preschool education in the future.