An Action Research On The Promotion Of Emotional Understanding Of Middle Class Children By Educational Drama Activities

Emotional understanding is the basis for good peer relationships and social adjustment in young children.This study found that educational drama activities can promote the development of young children’s emotional abilities through a review of existing research,but no research has been conducted on educational drama interventions for school-age children’s emotional understanding.Therefore,this study uses action research to investigate the effect of this intervention on children’s emotional understanding through the implementation of educational drama activities,and eventually form an effective educational drama program and summarize teaching strategies.Before the implementation of the action research,a total of 120 children in primary,middle and older classes in a public kindergarten in Shandong Province were tested using the Test of Emotion Comprehension(TEC)to measure the emotional understanding of children at each grade level and to analyze the developmental characteristics of emotional understanding,and the middle class children were selected as the subjects of the action research.Then,20 children from each of the two kindergarten classes were randomly selected as the educational drama group and the control group,and the test,interview and observation methods were used to understand the developmental status of emotional understanding and emotional problems of the educational drama group before the action research.In the action research,four picture books were selected to design educational drama activities,and three rounds of action research were conducted for the educational drama group according to the research model of "plan-act-reflect-adjust" once a week for 30 minutes each time for 12 weeks.The following conclusions were drawn:(1)For emotional understanding,the implementation process of educational drama activities is composed of three major parts: warm-up activities,role experience and performance,and relaxation activities,among which,the role experience and performance includes five parts: creating conflict situations,reading picture books,experiencing and expressing,trying to resolve conflicts,and communicating feedback;(2)Strategies for educational drama planning and implementation include: focusing on the problem and highlighting the focus;consistent and advancing implementation;evaluating feedback and reflecting on effectiveness;(3)Educational drama activities can significantly contribute to the overall development of emotional understanding in middle class children,effectively enhancing the development of cause emotional understanding,belief emotional understanding,emotional regulation understanding and mixed emotional understanding,while being able to solve emotional problems.Attempt to make the following suggestions:(1)Focus on the development of emotional understanding in young children;(2)Teachers’ theoretical knowledge and practical experience in educational drama should be improved in multiple ways,including: kindergartens should provide learning materials for teachers,and teachers should continuously improve their theoretical knowledge and practical ability in educational drama;(3)Focus on strategies in the design and implementation of educational drama,including: deconstructing picture books before designing activities,clarify the basic steps of educational drama activities,and mastery of educational drama teaching strategies for emotional understanding,etc.