The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children's Graphic Representation of Emotion

Drawing is valued as a non-verbal assessment tool to measure children’s conceptual development and emotional state. Drawing has also been described as a problem-solving activity and unique symbol system. Although drama has been known to facilitate learning in other symbol systems, such as reading and writing, and to bring about advances in perspective taking and understanding of emotion, its impact on drawing has not been previously examined. In this study Kindergarten and first grade children were instructed to draw a happy tree, sad tree, and angry tree before and after a 10-hour drama intervention. Half of the children participated in the intervention while the remaining children were members of a control group who participated in the regular school program. Consistent with expectations, children who participated in the drama program showed significantly greater improvement from pretest to posttest in drawing emotion compared to control children. Their drawings improved more in clearly depicting the emotion they were instructed to convey and in the use of higher level drawing strategies. The results suggest that experience in emotional perspective taking of drama may generalize to the domain of drawing and enhance expression. The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children’s Graphic Representation of Emotion by L. A. Kapsch A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 2006 Copyright by L.A. Kapsch 2006