The objective of this study is to verify the effect of a creative drama on development of Emotional Quotient (EQ) in children. The EQ development is supposed to be achieved in infancy and childhood period as it plays a major role in intellectual learn...
The objective of this study is to verify the effect of a creative drama on development of Emotional Quotient (EQ) in children. The EQ development is supposed to be achieved in infancy and childhood period as it plays a major role in intellectual learning and preparation to become a whole man. Therefore education for EQ in childhood should be taken into consideration and positive effects from a creative drama, which can be achieved by a play and experience, are expected as an important role for its implementation. To achieve the objective of the study, our hypotheses are based on the theoretical background of the creative drama and EQ. (1) The children who participated in the creative drama will show higher EQ than the children who didn’t. (2) The creative drama will show higher effect of EQ in the children than children with non-creative drama program.
To conduct the study, we sampled 34 children from a kindergarten located in Songpa-ku, Seoul, Korea with no experience of any creative drama.
The subjects were divided into 3 groups of 12 children. The experimental
group received the creative drama for 12 weeks, the other group received non-creative drama program, and control group received no program. The tools to assess and verify children’s EQ in this study was adapted by Lee Byung-Rae (1997) and it was originally modified and developed by Mayer and Salovey (1996) who conducted a study based on children under 5-6 years old in daily activities. The other variables to test EQ are composed of self-recognition skill, self-management skill, ability to recognize, ability of interpersonal control, and ability of interpersonal relationship.
The summary of the result is as follow.
First, the creative drama group showed higher statistical significance (p<.01) than other group and control group in the self-management skill item.
The experimental group also showed higher statistical significance (p<.01) than other group and control among the items of ability to recognize, interpersonal control, and interpersonal relationship. Second, there was significant difference between the creative drama and non-creative program. Some improvements were observed from non-creative program however, the creative drama showed more significant improvement in the variables.
From the results of the study, it showed that the creative drama has a positive effect on developing children’s EQ and indicates that the important role of creative drama as EQ education in childhood. In conclusion, the creative drama can be widely used and its format has flexible applicability than any other art programs. However, our study has limitations in selecting samples and its limited study period. Consideration for sex and environment of the subjects and the longer period of study will be recommended for the upcoming studies.