This study purposed to analyze the effects of cooperative art activities with paper folding on young children’s social competence and drawing expression ability and to provide basic materials for the educational and effective application of cooperat...
This study purposed to analyze the effects of cooperative art activities with paper folding on young children’s social competence and drawing expression ability and to provide basic materials for the educational and effective application of cooperative art activities with paper folding.
Research questions to be answered in through this study are as follows.
1. What effects do cooperative art activities with paper folding have on young children’s social competence?
2. What effects do cooperative art activities with paper folding have on young children’s drawing expression ability?
The subjects of this study were two classes of 4~5 year?old children at a public school?annexed kindergarten in J County, Jollanam?do, and the two classes were assigned to the experimental group and the comparative group, respectively, at random. A total of 42 children participated in this study, 21 in the experimental group and 21 in the comparative group.
Research tools used in this study were Young Children’s Social Competence Scale, which was prepared by Lee Yeong?ja, Lee Jong?sook and Yang Seung?ok(1988) through translating the Vineland Social Adaptive Behavior Scale developed by Sparrow, Balla & Cicchetti(1985), for measuring young children’s social competence, and the Art Representation Ability Scale developed by Chi Sung?Ae(2001) for measuring young children’s drawing expression ability.
This study was conducted through preliminary research, pretest, experiment and posttest. The homogeneity of the experimental group and the comparative group was determined through a pretest before the experiment was started. Then the experimental group had cooperative art activities with paper folding and the comparative group did the same paper folding and then had individual art activities. The experiment was conducted 3 times a week for 7 weeks and a total of 19 times. The posttest was performed in the same way as the pretest.
In order to examine the effects of cooperative art activities with paper folding on young children’s social competence and drawing expression ability, we collected the results of the pretest and the posttest, and made comparative analysis of the data through t?test using SPSS.
The results of this study are summarized as follows.
First, according to the results of analyzing difference in social competence between the experimental group that had cooperative art activities with paper folding and the comparative group that had individual art activities with paper folding, improvement in social competence was significantly higher in the experimental group. In addition, for ‘social activity,’ ‘cooperativeness,’ ‘social participation and autonomy’ and ‘leadership’ among the sub?factors of social competence, cooperative art activities with paper folding were more effective than individual art activities.
Second, according to the results of analyzing difference in drawing expression ability between the experimental group and the comparative group, improvement in drawing expression ability was significantly higher in the experimental group. In addition, for ‘the combination of lines and basic forms,’ ‘the use of colors,’ ‘harmonious spaces,’ ‘various shapes’ and ‘symbols related to subjects' among the sub?factors of drawing expression ability, the experimental group showed higher improvement than the comparative group.
Summing up these results, cooperative art activities with paper folding were more effective in improving young children’s social competence and drawing expression ability than individual art activities with paper folding. The results of this study suggest that cooperative art activity with paper folding is one of meaningful teaching methods for improving social competence and drawing expression ability, and worthy of being applied in the field of early childhood education.