Modern society has become increasingly indifferent to life due to environmental pollution and materialism, and such indifference to life and the loss of human morality have become a social problem. As a result of the life crisis that we face today, th...
Modern society has become increasingly indifferent to life due to environmental pollution and materialism, and such indifference to life and the loss of human morality have become a social problem. As a result of the life crisis that we face today, the natural environment is destroyed and many of animal and plant species face extinction each year. The incidents involving animal abandonment and animal abuse are increasingly becoming common these days, and such phenomenon reflects the widespread trend of devaluing life in our society. Among many other reasons, this paper asserts that the reason why people make light of the animal's life is primarily due to the lack of basic awareness that all life should be respected.
The knowledge-centered education poses a problem in that, while such method of education helps students to understand that life is precious, it doesn’t lead the students to actually practicing respect for life in reality as they fail to internalize the sense of respect for life. Given this, this study is motivated by the fact that true life respect education should encourage the students to learn by themselves through actual practices rather than merely explaining theoretical concepts. Although there are various educational methods to raise awareness of respect for life, it would be most effective to utilize actual case studies around us to understand and feel the importance of life through activities that allow the students to sympathize with animal and plant species and understand that they are living things—not toys—that hold the same feelings of joy and sadness as humans.
According to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (2001), role play is one of the most appropriate teaching and learning methods for teaching values and attitudes. Role play is a learning method in which learners are trained to think and act on behalf of others by performing specific roles in various situations similar to real life. Typical educational functions of role play include 'empathy' that comprehends the feelings of others while empathizing with their thoughts and actions. The ability to move away from egocentrism to understanding and empathizing with others is related to the attitude that perceives other living things as emotional beings. By engaging students in role play, this method aims to naturally enhance their respect for life by allowing the learners to think in the organic animals’ positions and empathizing with the pain the creatures would have received.
Given this, this study was conducted based on the relationship between the educational effect of role play and life respect education, and the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using role play in the 6th grade art class on the students’ sense of respect for life.
In order to achieve this, this study examines several theories behind the principle of life respect and role play by surveying the previous studies and related literature, in addition to analyzing the 5th and 6th grade art textbooks with revisions made in 2009. Based on such findings, this study then constructs a teaching program for an art class with the aim to raise awareness of life respect. Utilizing role play, the lesson is structured to encourage the students to feel the value and importance of life through the activity of making comics about understanding the emotions of other living things.
An experiment was conducted with the sample of 56 students across two different 6th grade classes from S Elementary School located in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea. After conducting a homogeneity test, the 28 students from one of the classes were assigned to an experimental group while the 28 students from the other class were designated as a control group. In the control group, an art class based on textbooks and slides were carried out for eight sessions. On the other hand, for the experimental group, an art class using role play was conducted for 10 sessions.
For comparison and analysis of the results, this paper uses SPSS Ver. 21.0 to process the life respect awareness test results from before and after the experiment, and closely examines the data analysis results to draw conclusions. The results of this study are as follows.
First, as a result of comparing and analyzing life respect consciousness before and after the experiment, the mean value increased in both controlled and experimental groups after the experiment while the magnitude of such increase was higher in the experimental group than the control group
In addition, the experimental group was rated higher than the control group in character design and cut cartoon. As a result of analyzing the cartoons produced by the students, the experimental group received higher ratings than the control group in topic expression and expression method. In particular, the experiment group performed better in effectively communicating the purpose by displaying a sense of life respect through the subject expression in the cartoons.
Therefore, this study concludes that art lesson using role play has more positive effect on cultivating learner's sense of life respect than textbook and slide oriented art classes. Moreover, the paper asserts that art lessons using role play has positive effects on not only understanding the value of respect for life but also actually practicing the concepts in real life.