ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Although there is a national curriculum for art education in the UK there are also alternative approaches in the private sector. This paper addresses the issue of the effect of these approaches on children's drawing ability. AIM: To compare the drawing ability in three drawing tasks of children in Steiner, Montessori and traditional schools. SAMPLE: The participants were 60 school children between the ages of 5;11 and 7;2. Twenty children were tested in each type of school. METHOD: Each child completed three drawings: a free drawing, a scene and an observational drawing. RESULTS: As predicted, the free and scene drawings of children in the Steiner school were rated more highly than those of children in Montessori and traditional schools. Steiner children's use of colour was also rated more highly, although they did not use more colours than the other children. Steiner children used significantly more fantasy topics in their free drawings. Further observation indicated that the Steiner children were better at using the whole page and organising their drawings into a scene; their drawings were also more detailed. Contrary to previous research Montessori children did not draw more inanimate objects and geometrical shapes or fewer people than other children. Also, contrary to the prediction, Steiner children were significantly better rather than worse than other children at observational drawing. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the approach to art education in Steiner schools is conducive not only to more highly rated imaginative drawings in terms of general drawing ability and use of colour but also to more accurate and detailed observational drawings.
Subject(s)
Aptitude , Art , Teaching/methods , Child , Child, Preschool , Creativity , Curriculum , England , Female , Humans , Imagination , MaleABSTRACT
Previous research has shown that the human figure drawings of severely disturbed children contain more emotional indicators than those of well-adjusted children, whether the well-adjusted children are of the same chronological age or are younger but of the same mental age as the severely disturbed children. This finding suggests that the disturbed children's drawings may be different rather than merely immature. A problem with previous research, however, is that groups have not been matched for drawing ability. In study 1 of this paper each drawing of 44 severely disturbed boys was matched with that of a normal boy according to its score on the Goodenough-Harris scoring system. There was no significant difference between the groups in the number of emotional indicators included in the drawings. Furthermore, in study 2, judges could not discriminate the drawings of the two groups. It was concluded that the differences noted in previous research were most likely due to the poorer drawing ability of the severely disturbed children rather than unusual features in their drawings.
Subject(s)
Affective Symptoms/diagnosis , Art , Child Behavior Disorders/diagnosis , Affective Symptoms/psychology , Child , Child Behavior Disorders/psychology , Humans , Male , Observer Variation , Reproducibility of Results , Task Performance and AnalysisABSTRACT
The human figure drawings of a group of emotionally-disturbed boys were compared with those of a group of well-adjusted boys closely matched for chronological age and another for mental age. A comparison based on Koppitz's (1968) original emotional indicators and another, based on new UK norms, showed that the emotionally-disturbed children included significantly more indicators in their drawings than their well-adjusted peers. Although this difference was statistically significant it is actually quite small. In addition, there were no differences among the groups in the kinds of indicators they exhibited. The usefulness of the Koppitz test as a tool for clinical use is questioned.
Subject(s)
Affect/physiology , Mental Health , Projective Techniques , Catchment Area, Health , Child , Child Behavior Disorders/diagnosis , Child Behavior Disorders/psychology , England , Female , Health Status Indicators , Humans , Male , Severity of Illness Index , Social AdjustmentABSTRACT
A younger group (mean age 5; 10) and an older group (mean age 9; 11) of children were asked to place a toy man IN FRONT OF or BEHIND a car which either faced away from them or faced sideways. When the observer's viewpoint was not emphasized in the instructions, or was merely implied, both age groups responded in a nondeictic way. When the viewpoint of the observer was an essential component of the task and the spatial term was omitted, both age groups selected a deictic location. However, when the viewpoint was emphasized but when the spatial term was also included the responses were split between deictic and nondeictic locations.
Subject(s)
Child Language , Language Development , Orientation , Semantics , Child , Child, Preschool , Concept Formation , Female , Humans , Male , VocabularyABSTRACT
The procedure used by Pratt, Tunmer & Bowey (1984) was employed in this study to investigate young children's abilities to correct over-regularized plural nouns and verbs in the past tense. Older children (mean age 6;4) performed better than younger children (mean age 4;11) and plural nouns were corrected significantly more than past-tense verb forms. As predicted, the younger children were better at correcting the nouns than the verbs; the two grammatical forms were corrected equally well by the older children.
Subject(s)
Language Development , Linguistics , Child , Child, Preschool , HumansABSTRACT
Task materials were devised which allowed two different explanations of the Piagetian water-level task to be distinguished. Two experiments are reported with 5-6 and 7-8 year olds in which both a predictive and a perceptual task were used. The results support Ibbotson and Bryant's explanation that the performance of young children is affected by a perpendicular bias. This effect was weaker, particularly among 7-8 year olds, in the perceptual task.
Subject(s)
Child Development , Concept Formation , Form Perception , Orientation , Space Perception , Attention , Child , Child, Preschool , Cues , HumansSubject(s)
Language Development , Space Perception , Verbal Behavior , Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Humans , Middle Aged , Orientation , SemanticsABSTRACT
A 3-year intervention programme with parents of severely subnormal pre-school children is described. Two experimental groups, one visited individually at 2-week intervals and one similarly at 8-week intervals are compared with a third distal contrast group receiving no intervention. Analyses of successive IQ changes in all three groups after 2 years than that receiving more visits but that this difference disappeared after 3 years. The contrast non-intervention group made fewer gains overall than either of the two experimental groups. Four questions are discussed: the maintenance of early gains, the influence of social class, the optimal level of intervention and the meaning of successful intervention to parents. Evaluation of the project is concerned with experimental efficiency, methodology, and the problems of partnership.
