The Effects of Emotion-Based Art Instruction on Social-Emotional Development in Preschoolers

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

The question of what environments best facilitate social-emotional growth in children has created a research movement towards an examination of early education programs on development. Several studies have observed developmental outcomes by comparing arts-based versus traditional early learning programs. Brown and Sax (2012) compared arts-based and traditional programming and found stronger social-emotional development in children who attended art classes in comparison to those attending traditional classes. Ashdown and Bernard (2012) and Bierman et al. (2008) have illustrated the power of direct social-emotional instruction on positive developmental outcomes. When considering the comprehensive positive social-emotional development results from these studies, the combination of explicit social-emotional instruction and arts-based curriculum could be the key to enhanced social-emotional development and elevated school readiness in children. The current research study sought to investigate the impact of two teaching styles (emotion-based instruction versus non-emotion based) on social-emotional development in children. Our project was conducted over a 12-week period and included 69 preschool-aged participants from local preschools in rural Illinois. The preschoolers were participants in an art class which either included instruction that had a description of emotions, or art classes which did not include a discussion of emotions, but only instruction in how to complete the art project. The impact of these two teaching styles was compared using an assessment of the children’s social and emotional competencies. Research assistants were trained to observe and code the participants’ social-emotional behaviors using nine behavioral codes through the application Animal Behavior Pro on iPads (Newton-Fisher, 2012). Based on previous research, we hypothesized that there would be a change in children’s observed social-emotional behaviors based on whether the art classes included emotion lessons. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare three levels of social-emotional teacher interactions on the level of social-emotional interaction with peers. Children who were low, medium, or high on neutral/negative social-emotional teacher interactions were compared on the proportion of neutral/negative social-emotional interactions that they had with their peers when exposed to a non-emotional art class. The results reveal that there was a significant difference between groups. Children who scored high on negative/neutral social-emotional interactions with their teachers had significantly more negative/neutral interactions with their peers (M = .98) than children in the medium group (those who had an intermediate level of negative/neutral social-emotional interactions with their teacher, M = .93) [F (2, 67) = 3.45, p = .037, see Figure 1]. In the art classes with an emotion theme, the effect of teacher social-emotional interactions on peer social-emotional interactions was not significant. The implications of these results are that when emotions were not incorporated into the lesson, there was a significant effect of neutral/negative teacher interactions on neutral/negative peer interactions, with children high in neutral/negative interactions exhibiting more neutral/negative interactions with peers. However, when emotions were the central theme of the art classes, there was no significant effect of neutral/negative teacher interactions on neutral/negative peer interactions. It may be beneficial to include discussions of emotions in preschool education settings to decrease the probability of neutral/negative interactions.

Authors

• Paige Hemming, Illinois State University
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Bove, Illinois State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Campbell, Illinois State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eliza L Nelson, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author