The purpose of this study was to construct the art elements- centered cooperative art activity and to analyze the effects of the art elements-centered cooperative art activity on young children's pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing represen...
The purpose of this study was to construct the art elements- centered cooperative art activity and to analyze the effects of the art elements-centered cooperative art activity on young children's pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing representation ability.
To acquire the purpose, the following questions were established.
First, How do art elements-centered cooperative art activity affect pro-sociability of young children?
Second, How do art elements-centered cooperative art activity affect language ability of young children?
Third, How do art elements-centered cooperative art activity affect drawing representation ability of young children?
The subjects in this study were 50 young children (25 in experimental group, 25 in comparative group) at age 5 in two classes of S private kindergarten located in G city, with one of the classes designated as the experimental group and the other as the comparative group on a random basis. Average age of the subjects was 71.04 months in the experimental group and 71.04 months in the comparative group, which shows the homogeneity of two groups.
The translated and modified version of ‘Social Situation Measurement’ devised by McGinnis and Goldstein(1990), the ‘Understanding about Syntactic Meaning Scale’ developed and standardized by Seoul Community Rehabilitation Center(2009), and the ‘Drawing representation Ability Scale’ made by Chi, Sung-Ae(2001) were used to measure pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing representation ability of young children respectively.
Interventions for the study were made up to 12 times-three times a week for four weeks from June 25 to July 20, 2012. Young children in the experimental group participated in art elements-centered cooperative art activity, while their counterparts in the comparative group involved in expression-centered cooperative art activity.
In order to look into how those interventions affect pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing representation ability of young children, we employed the SPSS 18.0 statistical program to analyze data collected from pre-test and post-test of the experimental group and the comparative group. Pro-sociability and language ability, proved to be homogeneous between the two groups in the pre-test, were analyzed by t-test to find out any difference between the pre-test and post-test. However, drawing representation ability, which was not homogeneous in the pre-test, was tested via ANCOVA with the score of the pre-test as a covariate to investigate whether the difference between the pre-test and post-test of the two groups is significant.
The results of the study are summarized as follows.
First, art elements-centered cooperative art activity appeared to have a positive effect on pro-sociability of young children. Young children in the experimental group who participated in art elements-centered cooperative art activity significantly exceeded those in the comparative group who involved in expression-centered cooperative art activity in the scores of ‘institution adaptive ability,' ‘peer relationship-building ability,' and ‘emotion controling ability' as sub-categories of pro-sociability.
Second, art elements-centered cooperative art activity were found to positively influence the improvement of language ability of young children. Scores of ‘syntactic structure' and ‘meaning' as sub-categories of language ability of young children in the experimental group who participated in art elements-centered cooperative art activity were significantly higher than their counterparts in the comparative group who engaged in expression-centered cooperative art activity.
Third, art elements-centered cooperative art activity tended to affect positively the improvement of drawing representation ability of young children. Scores of ‘combination of basic shapes and lines,' ‘various colors,' ‘harmonious composition,' and ‘connection of representation and language' as sub-categories of drawing representation ability were higher among young children in the experimental group who participated in art elements-centered cooperative art activity than their counterparts in the comparative group of expression-centered cooperative art activity.
In conclusion, the research revealed that art elements-centered cooperative art activity developed in this study were found to be effective in improving pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing representation ability of young children, which indicates that art elements-centered cooperative art activity developed in this study can be applied to early childhood education settings with validity. Therefore, art elements-centered cooperative art activity developed in this study are expected to be widely used in early childhood education scenes to seek a teaching-learning method that increases pro-sociability, language ability, and drawing representation ability of young children.