Browsing by Author "Manninen, Maarit"

The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of drama education regarding the bold self-expression of the pre-school aged child. Children will go to school the following year, so in pre-school it is valuable to invest on encouraging children in their self-expression skills as the ex-pression skills are highly valued in both the school and the working world. Basis for the study is that various skills, such as self-expression, can be learned. The research task was refined by three research questions exploring the factors that are required to build-up bold self-expression, how drama education can impact on the development of the chil-dren’s self-expression skills, and how being encouraged appears on the individual and the small group level. The theoretical framework of the study contains two main concepts: self-esteem and drama education. Self- esteem is covered from temperament and encouraging perspective. Drama education includes self-expression, emotional education ja social skills. Previous studies have fo-cused mainly on strengthening child’s self-esteem. There is only a small amount of research on be-ing encouraged in self-expression skills from child’s point of view. This study is qualitative in nature and selected approach to the theme was action research which was carried out through three drama sessions to the group of children. Four children were selected to this small group in collaboration with the group’s kindergarten teachers. Common goal for all the children was to get encouraged in their emotional expression and especially to two of them needed additionally encouragement in self-expression in general. Children’s needs and the themes that had risen in previous sessions were taken noted in the planning. The data was collected by using a re-search journal, video observation and children’s interview through “stimulated recall” method. Ma-terial was studied through video analysis, which displayed how many times children did express themselves linguistically, physically and emotionally. In addition, it was analyzed, how many con-tact initiatives children took towards friends, researcher and the whole group. Filming enabled to observe the accurate number of children’s initiatives and to compare results both within and be-tween the sessions. Children’s basic sense of security was supported by selecting friends to the small group. According to the results, it can be said that the children were able to relax quickly and even more shy children were able to make more initiatives. Based on this intervention it can be stated, that drama support children by empowering their self-expression skills. The results also showed that there were differ-ences between different drama methods concerning the effects on children’s self-expression both in individual and group level. Sessions displayed as a small group activity supported children’s self-expression skills to come forth at the individual level in almost all the areas studied.