This study aims to improve prosocial behaviors of children through active interaction among peers by planning, deciding activities, and adjusting their opinions together in choosing an art activity theme related to everyday life from seeing a well-kno...
This study aims to improve prosocial behaviors of children through active interaction among peers by planning, deciding activities, and adjusting their opinions together in choosing an art activity theme related to everyday life from seeing a well-known painting and doing art activities together. In addition, it also attempts to verify the effect of appreciating well-known paintings on development of aesthetic attitude of children by making them interested in and familiar with the paintings and sharing their feelings and thoughts about them.
Research problems set related to the purposes of this study are as follows:
Problem 1. How does collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings affect prosocial behavior of children?
Problem 2. How does collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings affect the aesthetic attitude of children?
In order to examine the problems above, 15 children at the age of 5 attending the K kindergarten and 15 children at the age of 5 attending the W kindergarten in Anyang, Gyeonggido, were assigned as an experimental group and control group and asked to do collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings. The research was conducted for 10 weeks from August 20 to October 26, 2012, in 14 sessions, during which time the experimental group did collaborative art activity with a teacher in the art class whereas the control group had a curriculum-based class led by the teacher.
To measure prosocial behavior of children, the prosocial behavior assessment tool modified and adapted by Lee (1999), which was based on a version used in ‘Children’s Sociality Improvement Program’, which was translated for the research by Lee, Park, and Noh (1993), based on the Skill Situations Measure developed by McGinnis and Goldstein (1990) was used. To measure aesthetic attitude, the aesthetic attitude assessment scheme was adopted from the one that has been made by Lee (1994) and adjusted three times by preliminary observation and experts’ reliability tests, based on the scheme for physical, cognitive, perceptual, social, emotional, and aesthetic evaluation suggested in the studies of Lasky and Mukerji(1985), Day(1980, 1985) and Cotton(1981), as well as in that of Gentile and Murnyack(1989).
The collected data was compared and analyzed by performing independent samples t-test, after obtaining the average and standard deviation from the pretest and posttest of prosocial behavior and aesthetic attitude of the experimental and control groups.
The result of this study can be summarized as follows:
First, collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings has a positive effect on prosocial behavior of children. It led to statistically significant difference in the subcategories of social behavior: ability to control personal emotion, to form interpersonal relation, and to adapt to the kindergarten.
Second, collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings improved the aesthetic attitude of children. The experimental group showed statistically significant improvement in the subcategories of aesthetic attitude: artistic expression, aesthetics, art history, and art criticism.
In conclusion, collaborative art activity based on appreciating well-known paintings is effective for improving prosocial behavior and aesthetic attitude.