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Arts enrichment and preschool emotions for low-income children at risk
Abstract
No studies to date examine the impact of arts-integrated preschool programming on the emotional functioning of low-income children at risk for school problems. The present study examines observed emotion expression and teacher-rated emotion regulation for low-income children attending Settlement Music School's Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program. At a level of p < .001, results indicate the following. First, within Kaleidoscope, children showed greater observed positive emotions such as interest, happiness, and pride, in music, dance, and visual arts classes, as compared to traditional early learning classes. Second, children at Kaleidoscope showed greater observed positive emotions than peers attending a comparison preschool that did not include full integration of the arts. Third, across the school year, children at Kaleidoscope showed greater growth in teacher-rated levels of positive and negative emotion regulation. The implication is that arts enrichment may promote social–emotional readiness to learn for low-income children at risk for school problems.
... 18 Previous studies reported several existing interventions that can promote psychological well-being among children living in poverty. [19][20][21] These interventions included musical training, 19 art enrichment programmes 20 and adventure-based training. 21 Although participants demonstrated improvements in their psychological health, [19][20][21] these interventions had limitations that undermined large-scale implementation. ...
... [19][20][21] These interventions included musical training, 19 art enrichment programmes 20 and adventure-based training. 21 Although participants demonstrated improvements in their psychological health, [19][20][21] these interventions had limitations that undermined large-scale implementation. First, these interventions involved many sessions spreading over months or years. ...
... First, these interventions involved many sessions spreading over months or years. [19][20][21] This limited their feasibility, especially as most Hong Kong children engage in many academic and extracurricular activities. Second, these interventions were implemented by professional trainers, which was costly [19][20][21] and meant the interventions were not sustainable when the funding was exhausted. ...
Introduction
Poverty has a detrimental influence on psychological well-being of children. Existing evidence shows that positive psychology interventions are possible to mitigate such impact. Despite criticisms that positive psychology resembles a scientific Pollyannaism that promotes overly positivity, positive psychology is not the scientific Pollyannaism that denies the difficulties and emotions that people may experience. Whereas, positive psychology acknowledges the difficulties and emotions, alongside with building up human resilience, strength and growth to face adversity. This study examined the feasibility of implementing a positive psychology intervention among Hong Kong Chinese children living in poverty.
Methods
A feasibility randomised controlled trial will be conducted. A convenience sample of 120 children aged 13–17 years will be recruited from a community centre in Kwai Tsing district. Participants who are randomised into the experimental group will join a 1.5-hour workshop covering four positive psychology techniques: (1) gratitude visits/letters, (2) three good things, (3) you at your best and (4) using signature strengths. A booster intervention will be provided at 1 week. Control group participants will not receive any intervention. Assessments will be conducted at baseline and at 1-week, 1-month, 3-month and 6-month follow-ups.
Analysis
Descriptive statistics will be used to calculate the feasibility measures. Effect sizes on psychological outcomes (ie, self-esteem, depressive symptoms and quality of life) will be estimated by mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance using partial eta squared with poverty (yes, no) entering into the model as a factor.
Ethics and dissemination
Ethical approval has been obtained from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Institutional Review Broad. We will obtain parental consent as our subjects are below 18 years old. Findings from this study will be disseminated via international publications and conferences.
Trial registration number
NCT04875507 .
... Two of the articles analyzed dealt with emotional regulation in relation to educational programs including music therapy and concluded that they favored emotional regulation. On the one hand, Brown and Sax [63] compared the emotional state and regulatory capacity of a group of students after attending a traditional education program or a program with a greater emphasis on arts education, including music education. It was found that individuals who participated in the latter showed a greater capacity to regulate emotions, both positive and negative. ...
... On the other hand, Venegas et al. [76] found that the use of an interdisciplinary application that used music to support the learning of graphical representation in mathematics generated positive emotional levels in students. Similarly, another study found that greater use of music education increased motivation levels among students [63]. Rauduvaite [70] found that the introduction of urban popular music into the classroom can promote meaningful values in education, partly due to the emotional bond that students have with this type of repertoire. ...
... Fourteen studies used musical training as the independent variable and obtained evidence that it improved diverse socio-emotional competencies, including: identifying emotions in images and/or texts [68]; a greater capacity to regulate emotions [63]; concentration and creativity [82]; students' ability to recognise emotions [73]; improved learning and mathematics [76]; a positive effect on children's self-expression, self-efficacy, and social skills [78]; improved the feelings experienced when attending class [69]; greater emotional awareness and motivation from singing [66]; increased empathy and positive feelings for learning [67]; influenced the effects of emotional understanding [64]; influenced emotional awareness, regulation and autonomy [80]; increased pro-social behavior in neurotypical children in relation to the social exclusion of autistic children [74]; promoted the development of pro-social skills [81]; improved behaviors such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, inattention and some defiant attitudes [83]; and increased children's motivation and thus their learning capacity [66]. ...
Interest in the study of emotions in education has grown in recent years. Some of our modern challenges, such as constantly adapting to new scenarios or the need for team work have justified the introduction of emotional competence into educational systems, while diverse studies confirm the relationship between music and emotional intelligence, so that the former could be used as a tool to develop the latter. The aim of this work was to examine the evidence for positive effects of music on the emotions of 3- to 12-year-old children, to which end a systematic re-view was carried out. Two reviewers independently evaluated 424 studies that were identified in MEDLINE, Psycinfo, and CINAHL databases, in order to determine whether they met the stated inclusion criteria. A total of 26 articles were selected for review. The results suggest several beneficial effects of music on children’s development, such as greater emotional intelligence, academic performance, and prosocial skills. It can therefore be concluded that music should be used in school settings, not only as an important subject in itself, but also as an educational tool within other subjects.
... Although the findings from this research have not always been consistent, there has been much support for the proposition that music is positively related to academic achievement, cognitive functioning, and behavioral changes. That said, while the outcomes have been positive for middle-class children few studies to date have examined the effects of music on low-income children's academic achievement and behavior (Brown & Sax, 2013;Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010;Brown, Garnett, Velazquez-Martin, & Mellor, 2018). Moreover, even fewer studies have examined the relationship between the arts broadly defined and children's school readiness and overall development (National Endowment of the Arts, 2011Arts, , 2015. ...
... In general, the findings have suggested that exposure to the arts can enhance cognitive and learning skills, particularly for those children most at risk for poor developmental outcomes (National Endowment of the Arts, 2011). That said, to date, only a small number of studies have examined the effect of the visual arts on children's school readiness skills (Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010;Brown & Sax, 2013;Brown et al., 2018). Results from this research have suggested that children who attend an arts program have better receptive vocabulary than children who do not attend such a program (Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010) and have superior positive emotions (Brown & Sax, 2013). ...
... That said, to date, only a small number of studies have examined the effect of the visual arts on children's school readiness skills (Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010;Brown & Sax, 2013;Brown et al., 2018). Results from this research have suggested that children who attend an arts program have better receptive vocabulary than children who do not attend such a program (Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010) and have superior positive emotions (Brown & Sax, 2013). That said, while these results are promising, there is still a lack of research in this area, with the majority of studies examining the effect of music on developmental outcomes and school achievement. ...
... Researchers have investigated the developmental value of music in children and found positive effects of music on cognition, behavioral, emotional, and social development (Brown & Sax, 2013;Moreno et al., 2011;Schellenberg, 2004;Williams et al., 2014;Winsler et al., 2011). In addition to these benefits, music has the potential to help children build confidence and drive for success through commitment, persistence, and motivation (Rosevear, 2010). ...
... Between 1999Between -2000Between and 2003Between -2004, California schools experienced a 50% decrease in student enrollment in music classes and a 26.7% decrease in music teachers (Abril & Gault, 2006). This is especially unfortunate for low-income children of color, as several scholars argue that music and the arts can be especially helpful for children in poverty and have the potential to help reduce the achievement gap (Brown & Sax, 2013;Foran, 2009). The Turnaround Arts Initiative, for example, implemented high-quality arts education to low-income and underperforming school districts (Stoelinga et al., 2013). ...
... Previous research shows that musical experiences provide multiple benefits (Brown & Sax, 2013;Moreno et al., 2011;Schellenberg, 2004;Williams et al., 2014;Winsler et al., 2011). Arts engagement is related to improved academic performance and socioemotional skills and appears especially helpful for children in poverty and ELLs (Catterall et al., 2012;Eisner, 1998). ...
Researchers attempting to show that music has positive effects on children need to understand and control for preexisting differences between those who do and do not select into musical participation in the first place. Within a large-scale, communitywide, prospective, longitudinal study of predominantly low-income, ethnically diverse students ( N = 31,332), we examined characteristics of students who did and did not enroll in music elective courses (band, choir, orchestra, guitar, other) in public middle schools (sixth, seventh, and eighth grades) in Miami. Predictor variables included gender, ethnicity, poverty, special education, English language learner status, fifth-grade English proficiency, prior academic performance (fifth-grade grade point average [GPA], standardized math and reading test scores), and initial school readiness skills (social, behavioral, cognitive, language, and motor skills) at age 4. Only 23% of middle school students enrolled in a music class in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, with band having the highest enrollment, followed by choir, orchestra, and guitar. Being male and having greater cognitive skills at age 4 and higher fifth-grade GPA and reading skills were related to later music participation. Black students, students in special education, and those not proficient in English were less likely to participate in middle school music classes. Results varied somewhat by type of music.
... Regarding emotional intelligence in music education, children who receive musical education score higher on emotional comprehension tests than those who do not receive such education (Schellenberg and Mankarious, 2012). In other studies, children's selfesteem (Lillemyr, 1983;Costa-Giomi, 2004;Kokotsaki and Hallam, 2007;Rickard et al., 2013), and self-regulation (Winsler et al., 2011;Brown and Sax, 2013;Williams, 2018) are influenced by music activities. ...
... Considering the finding that steady practice is necessary for proficiency in musical skills (e.g., Lehmann, 1997), it may be natural that skills related to task performance were regarded as notable by teachers. This salient "task performance" is also in accordance with self-regulation enhanced through music activities (McPherson and Renwick, 2011;Winsler et al., 2011;Brown and Sax, 2013;Williams, 2018) and with selfmanagement and discipline influenced by art education that includes music (Farrington et al., 2019). ...
Musical activities foster children’s social ability. However, the question remains whether professional music teachers consider musical training to have an influence on extra-musical abilities or only on the acquisition of musical skills. We conducted an online survey to collect open-ended responses regarding this question from over 2,000 music teachers in one of the biggest extracurricular fee-charging music school groups in Japan. Teachers’ free descriptions were classified into non-cognitive skills, and frequently occurring words were extracted through text mining. The results showed that, although the primary goal of music teachers who provide fee-charging lessons may be to teach musical skills to their students, they were aware of the effects of music lessons on children’s non-cognitive development. Our study’s main findings include: (1) despite free-descriptions, 92% of teachers reported that children acquired extra-musical abilities, and 98% of these responses were categorized as non-cognitive skills, (2) the most common responses within non-cognitive skills were “collaboration,” “task performance,” and “engaging with others”, and (3) there was a significant positive correlation between teaching experience and frequency of mentioning non-cognitive skills. Views on extra-musical abilities, which experienced music teachers especially had, may improve less-experienced teachers’ perspectives on teaching as well as their social roles and occupational awareness.
... Actualmente, se ha incrementado el interés por el estudio de las emociones en ámbitos educativos (Blasco-Magraner et al., 2021). Numerosos investigadores han analizado la importancia de la música en la infancia (Alegrado y Winsler, 2020;Brown y Sax, 2013;Corbeil et al., 2013;Theorell et al., 2018). Desde edades tempranas, bebés de 5 meses encontraron un significado social en aquellas melodías cantadas en vivo y experimentadas en casa por interlocutores sociales conocidos (Mehr et al., 2013). ...
... Desde esta perspectiva, la educación musical temprana incide positivamente sobre la expresión y regulación de las emociones positivas y negativas de los niños, incrementándose el número de emociones positivas observadas en comparación con sus iguales que no reciben este tipo de educación. En definitiva, el enriquecimiento artístico puede promover la preparación socioemocional para aprender la resolución de conflictos (Brown y Sax, 2013). De igual modo, el enriquecimiento artístico puede brindar oportunidades importantes para el desarrollo de habilidades pre-académicas, ya que actividades como la música y el movimiento estimulan los sentidos y el aprendizaje. ...
... Prior studies indicate that through engaging in creatively focused interventions (visual art and performance art), international middle and high school populations have made significant gains in empathy (Castillo et al., 2013;Ishaq, 2006). Music, theater, visual arts, and poetry have all been used to teach empathy and emotional awareness to children and adolescents in the USA and the UK (Brown & Sax, 2013;Goldstein & Winner, 2012;Gorrell, 2000;Ishaq, 2006;Rabinowitch et al., 2013). More specifically, research findings have shown that acting training increased empathy among elementary school-aged children (Goldstein & Winner, 2012); 8-11 year old children had higher emotional empathy scores following a musical group intervention (Rabinowitch et al., 2013); and arts-enrichment preschool children who took part in music, dance, and visual arts activities subsequently experienced greater emotion regulation (Brown & Sax, 2013), which has been proposed as a fundamental component of empathy (Decety & Lamm, 2006). ...
... Music, theater, visual arts, and poetry have all been used to teach empathy and emotional awareness to children and adolescents in the USA and the UK (Brown & Sax, 2013;Goldstein & Winner, 2012;Gorrell, 2000;Ishaq, 2006;Rabinowitch et al., 2013). More specifically, research findings have shown that acting training increased empathy among elementary school-aged children (Goldstein & Winner, 2012); 8-11 year old children had higher emotional empathy scores following a musical group intervention (Rabinowitch et al., 2013); and arts-enrichment preschool children who took part in music, dance, and visual arts activities subsequently experienced greater emotion regulation (Brown & Sax, 2013), which has been proposed as a fundamental component of empathy (Decety & Lamm, 2006). ...
Social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula are being increasingly implemented with young children; however, access to comprehensive programs can be prohibitive for programs limited by finances, time, or other factors. This article describes an exploratory case study that investigates the use of creative activity in the direct promotion of empathy and indirect promotion of other social-emotional skills for early elementary children in an urban-based after-school setting. A novel curriculum, Creating Compassion, which combines art engagement with explicit behavioral instruction, serves as a promising avenue for social-emotional skill development, and has particular importance for children from low-income households. Five children from racially minoritized backgrounds in grades kindergarten and first attended the Creating Compassion group intervention. Group-level data and individual data of direct behavior ratings suggested a modest increase in empathy development, responsible decision-making, and self-management skills and thereby provide a preliminary basis for further effectiveness investigation. Suggestions for future research in this area are discussed in addition to social justice implications.
... Throughout Europe, art is part of the curriculum (Sylva, Ereky-Stevens, & Ariescu, 2015) and it has been recently highlighted as one key strategy to promote the skills and attitudes from birth through age 6 that knowledge-based societies require (Winner et al., 2013). In addition, preschoolers' involvement in the arts is associated with receptive vocabulary (Brown, Benedett, & Armistead, 2010), emergent literacy (Phillips, Gorton, Pinciotti, & Sachdev, 2010), emotion expression and regulation (Brown & Sax, 2013), and self-confidence (Kim, Wee, & Gilbert, 2017). ...
... Findings from this study highlight how educator's choices in artistic activities are associated with different patterns of interaction quality. There are abundant claims that artistic activities can advance the development of thinking and communication skills (Brown & Sax, 2013;Maynard & Ketter, 2013). However, it seems that to ensure these skills are met, one cannot overlook the characteristics and quality of the activities being delivered. ...
Research Findings: In this study, we examine specific features of arts-related activities in crèche and its associations with the quality of group and child level interactions. Participants were 31 toddler classrooms and 50 children (Mage = 30.56; 52% girls). The quality of group level interactions was observed with the CLASS Toddler and the quality of child level interactions with the inCLASS Toddler. Results revealed that the vast majority of activities were Arts & crafts, conducted in small group, and were open-ended, although substantial variation was found. Findings further showed positive associations between active facilitation and the quality of interactions at both levels. Other activity features, such as the use of hands-on materials, social grouping and open-ended, were also associated with interaction quality. Practice or Policy: Results from the current study can inform crèche educators on how to better plan and conduct artistic activities. Arts & crafts activities can become especially fruitful moments for quality interactions, from the group and child perspectives, when the educator acts as a facilitator and co-player, providing materials that children can freely manipulate and giving children the freedom to create products from their imagination. Such suggestions are important to consider in arts-oriented curriculum guidelines for toddlers.
... Studies have shown associations between participation in the arts (music, dance, visual art, drama, multiarts) and positive child outcomes. Children's exposure to high-quality arts classes is related to decreased stress in the classroom measured via cortisol levels, and enhanced positive emotion (Brown, Garnett, Anderson, & Laurenceau, 2017;Brown & Sax, 2013). During early childhood, music activities and instruction are linked to higher numeracy skills, attention regulation, and prosocial behavior years later, even after controlling for parent-child home reading activities and other covariates (Williams, Barrett, Welch, Abad, & Broughton, 2015). ...
... Although many studies have shown associations between participation in the arts in general and enhanced child cognitive, social, and academic outcomes (Brown et al., 2017;Brown & Sax, 2013;Catterall, 2009;Catterall et al., 2012;Elpus, 2013a) and some have explored positive benefits for dance engagement in particular (Gilbert, 2006;Greenfader & Brouillette, 2017;Kim, 2007;Lobo & Winsler, 2006;Minton, 2003;Morgan & Stengel-Mohr, 2014;Park, 2007;Rossberg-Gempton et al., 1999;Seham, 1997), much of the research is correlational and does not adequately control for preexisting selection effects-the many ways that students who do and do not get arts experiences are initially different. Further, studies often examine rather global arts experiences (Catterall, 2009;Catterall et al., 2012;Winsler et al., 2019) when outcomes associated with arts participation are likely to vary by the particular art form in question . ...
Although research shows associations between adolescents general arts involvement and academic performance, little research documents links between enrollment in middle school dance elective courses and academic achievement, especially within low-income, urban populations. Further, differences between adolescents who do and do not have access to, or self-select into, middle school dance electives have yet to be identified. We prospectively followed a large (n = 31,332), ethnically diverse sample of children from preschool through 8th grade in Miami, Florida. About 7% of adolescents enrolled in a dance elective course at some point in middle school (6th- 8th grade), with the majority of those (68.8%) taking dance for only one year. Black students were more likely than White and Latinx students to attend middle schools that did not offer dance. When dance courses were available, males and Black students were less likely to select into a dance elective. Students who took dance in middle school showed greater initial social skills at age four and better prior academic achievement in elementary school compared with those who did not take dance. Importantly, controlling for all preexisting selection effects and prior academic achievement, dance engagement in middle school was associated with higher grade point averages and standardized test scores, better school attendance, and a lower likelihood of suspension during middle school, with stronger positive effects observed for taking dance electives for multiple years. Implications for future research and educational policy are discussed.
... Quasi-experimental evidence of ancillary effects for other arts domains, such as drama (Catterall, 2007;Elpus, 2013;Goldstein & Winner, 2012;Klorer & Robb, 2012;Podlozny, 2000), dance (Elpus, 2013;Kim, 2007;McMahon, Rose, & Parks, 2003;Seham, 1997), and visual art (Tishman, MacGillvray, & Palmer, 1999), or for a multiarts composite (E. D. Brown & Sax, 2013;R. Brown & Evans, 2002;Morrissey & Werner-Wilson, 2005), has also been found. Children in art-enriched preschools, for example, show enhanced positive emotion and emotion regulation compared to children in other schools (E. D. Brown & Sax, 2013;R. Brown & Evans, 2002). Beyond enhancing students' academics, the arts can also enhance stude ...
... , 2003;Seham, 1997), and visual art (Tishman, MacGillvray, & Palmer, 1999), or for a multiarts composite (E. D. Brown & Sax, 2013;R. Brown & Evans, 2002;Morrissey & Werner-Wilson, 2005), has also been found. Children in art-enriched preschools, for example, show enhanced positive emotion and emotion regulation compared to children in other schools (E. D. Brown & Sax, 2013;R. Brown & Evans, 2002). Beyond enhancing students' academics, the arts can also enhance students' engagement in school. For example, arts programs can incentivize youth to engage in coursework and feel more confident and motivated about learning (Nichols, 2015;Wright, John, Alaggia, & Sheel, 2006). Involvement in the arts during adolesc ...
It is critical for research on the effects of arts engagement to identify and carefully control for preexisting selection factors that differentiate those who do and do not get exposure to the arts. We prospectively followed a large and diverse sample of preschool children (n = 31,332; 61% Latino, 32% Black, 55% ELL, 81% free/reduced lunch) until they completed 6th, 7th, and/or 8th grade. School readiness was assessed during pre-K, and archival public-school data were collected in middle school. Overall, 40% of students took some kind of arts elective course (music, dance, drama, visual art) during middle school. Black students, males, students with disabilities, those previously retained, and those not English proficient had reduced odds of taking an arts class. Children with stronger school readiness skills at age 4 and stronger academics in 5th grade were more likely to enroll in arts-related courses. Importantly, controlling for prior variables associated with selection into the arts, including prior academic performance, students with exposure to an arts elective in middle school subsequently had significantly higher GPAs and math and reading scores, and decreased odds of school suspension, compared to students not exposed to the arts.
... Especially, the healing power of art is consulted in cases where children have heavier issues; for instance, in cases of traumatic incidents such as sexual abuse. It was identified that clay-based work used in art therapies have decreased the symptoms of trauma and increased the life skills of participants and created a sense of belonging whilst empowering them (Brown, 2020;Brown & Sax, 2013;Haynes, 2015;Morrison, 2020). ...
'Art' concept in early childhood period should be considered with a multidimensional perspective and must be enriched; and it can help children coming from different backgrounds and ethnicities for integrating with the society they are in; and support them in having a healthy communication. Because art has a central position in many cultural traditions. This case study indicates the potential importance of art for the young children under risk; and for children having a problematic education life. Integrating art into education and bringing in various cultural traditions to the classroom creates important opportunities for children coming from different backgrounds to develop the sense of belonging and pride.
... In one of these studies, Brown and Sax (2013) examined the emotional effects of arts integration for low-income preschoolers. They compared children in an artsintegration preschool with those in a more traditional preschool. ...
Learning how to regulate emotions is a significant developmental milestone in a child’s life. It is important to understand which activities help children cope with emotionally distressing situations. One such activity, I argue, is drawing. In this article, I consider 2 ways in which drawing elevates mood in children: drawing allows them to be distracted from their negative thoughts and feelings; or it allows them to express (and thus vent) their negative thoughts and feelings. Using drawing as a means of distraction proves more effective, perhaps because drawing to distract is more enjoyable and more absorbing than using drawing as a means of expression. Engaging in arts activities over many months not only increases positive emotions but also lowers stress as measured by cortisol levels. Taken together, this work demonstrates the important role that the arts play in children’s emotional lives.
... Several practical studies in the international academic community have applied art therapy to mental health education in primary and secondary kindergartens. They cover a richer range of content, with unprecedented levels of programs, groups involved, and intervention methods: helping children narrate and express stories about various aspects of their life experiences through the form of drawing to help address emotional and affective problems in childhood stages (Brown & Sax, 2013;Henley, 1986;Leitch, 2009). Drawing and writing techniques are gaining popularity in child health education research as a form of art therapy, and one study critically evaluated the application of the method, examining the origins and use of children's drawing in several disciplines and practice settings. ...
Purpose: This study aims to verify the significance of the Artistic Psychological Painting program for developing middle school students' psychological well-being through an educational program and a multi-factorial experimental design based on feedback from teachers and students. Methodology: This paper presents the format and content of the Artistic Psychological Painting program to test the program's effectiveness. The subjects were 12-15-year-old middle school students in the first and second grades of Southwest University South China Town Middle School (middle school) in Chongqing, China, and the Artistic Psychological Painting course they took at school. Findings: The study showed that the Artistic Psychological Painting program positively affected middle school students' emotional intelligence and self-identity. Accordingly, based on the initial definition and exploration of the connotation and extension of the Artistic Psychological Painting curriculum, we have communicated with school leaders, subject experts, in-service teachers, and students to propose the implementation of the "Artistic Psychological Painting". Recommendation: The program is designed to complement the psychological education curriculum in Chinese public schools and to provide a vision for school-based and community-based curricula.
... The blues performance had a greater impact on participants' positive affects than listening to the other two pieces so, if any teacher wants to increase them (e.g., enthusiasm, interest, etc.), students could be asked to perform simple pieces such as Rhythm's Blues. In this way, musical performance could increase students' resources, contributing to higher levels of motivation, concentration and interest, which promotes learning [55][56][57][58]. Likewise, it could be very useful for elementary and secondary music teachers, who will be able to contribute to socio-emotional improvement and personal development of their students. ...
Background
Currently, there are few empirical studies that demonstrate the effects of music on specific emotions, especially in the educational context. For this reason, this study was carried out to examine the impact of music to identify affective changes after exposure to three musical stimuli.
Methods
The participants were 71 university students engaged in a music education course and none of them were musicians. Changes in the affective state of non-musical student teachers were studied after listening to three pieces of music. An inter-subject repeated measures ANOVA test was carried out using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure their affective state.
Results
The results revealed that: (i) the three musical experiences were beneficial in increasing positive affects and reducing negative affects, with significant differences between the interaction of Music Experiences × Moment (pre-post); (ii) listening to Mahler’s sad fifth symphony reduced more negative affects than the other experimental conditions; (iii) performing the blues had the highest positive effects.
Conclusions
These findings provide applied keys aspects for music education and research, as they show empirical evidence on how music can modify specific affects of personal experience.
... Our initial investigations into these benefits focused on how teacher-child interaction and pedagogical practice during arts-integrated instruction might foster young children's school readiness. Early evidence of program impact on socioemotional aspects of school readiness (Brown et al., 2010) led to the refinement of the curriculum to further support the development of children's socioemotional skills, which, in turn, has yielded further evidence of the program's impact on children's socioemotional development (Brown & Sax, 2013) and school readiness more broadly (Brown et al., 2018). Our focus on the proximal processes of teacher-child interaction and teacher behaviour in the classroom as a lever for impacting children's school readiness throughout the partnership has yielded considerable insight into how the program achieves its effects. ...
The promise of applied developmental science is that we can use scientific methods to promote positive human development and improve the lives of children and families. However, the present political environment in the United States makes the creation of research‐informed federal policy difficult, even when the evidence supporting a given policy is unequivocal. In this essay, we hope to begin a conversation about how we, as applied developmental scientists, may modify our approach in order to best fulfill the promise of applied developmental science. To begin this conversation, we discuss the potential for establishing long‐term partnerships with smaller entities, including state and municipal governments and non‐governmental organizations to narrow the gap between what we know about children and families and the policies and programs that impact them. This ‘bottom‐up’ approach has a long lineage in applied developmental science, and is currently enjoying a renaissance through the burgeoning interest in researcher‐practitioner partnerships. Whether implicitly or explicitly, these partnerships often incorporate a systems perspective on children's development; here, we review why embracing a systems perspective may increase the likelihood of crafting policies and programs that can improve the lives of children and families.
... [25] Similarly, another study found that students' motivation levels increased as a result of greater participation in music education. [26] Another researcher has argued that students might learn significant values through exposure to music since various styles of music have a strong emotional connection with them. [27] The word "emotion regulation" refers to the innate and environmental mechanisms humans employ to track, assess, and control their emotional reactions. ...
Background:
Making music and listening to music have been found to contribute to positive mental health. In this study, we examined whether educational music intervention improved emotion regulation skills among first-year university music education students.
Methods:
The design of the study consisted of a randomized controlled trial with a treatment group as well as a control group. Students were randomly distributed to an intervention group and a control group. Students in the intervention group participated in twice-weekly group sessions for 8 weeks that discussed problem-solving skills, calming techniques, and retraining attributions. Instruments for data collection were; the Emotion Regulation Skills Scale and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire.
Results:
Results demonstrate that educational music intervention can facilitate the development of emotional regulation skills in undergraduate students majoring in music education.
Conclusion:
Based on the results of this study, educational music intervention is effective in enhancing emotional regulation among first-year undergraduate music education students. The educational music program provides participants with the opportunity to enhance their ability to regulate their emotions.
... In addition, arts-enriched preschool environments that include music (particularly singing) are likely to improve children's school readiness and receptive vocabulary (Brown, Benedett & Armistead, 2010), literacy (Phillips, Gorton, Pinciotti & Sachdev, 2010;Hannon et al. 2016), cognitive reasoning (Portowitz, Lichtenstein, Egorova & Brand, 2009;Henriksson-Macaulay & Welch, 2015) and emotional regulation skills. Such impact is evidenced in children at risk in low-income families (Brown & Sax, 2013;Trehub et al. 2015;Corbeil et al. 2016). See also Barrett, 2016;Hallam, 2015;Henriksson-Macaulay & Welch, 2016;Welch, 2006 for reviews of related literature. ...
‘Music for Change’ is a multi-year programme which aims to enhance children’s early development and improve rates of school readiness among pre-school children in northwest Westminster, an area of multiple deprivation in London. Devised to meet specific needs identified by the local authority’s Early Years Advisory Team, the project has a particular focus on supporting above average numbers of children with speech and language delay. A key strand of the project is a collaboration by Creative Future early years music specialists with NHS speech and language therapists (SLTs) from Central London Community Healthcare (CLCH). This started with a pilot project in the summer of 2015, and which has since then seen three distinct collaborative interventions in two nursery settings. The report covers the opening phase of the project in 2015-2016.
... Results from the current intervention contribute to prior research which investigated various aspects of the relationship between arts engagement and empathy development in children (Brown & Sax, 2013;Gorrell, 2000;Ishaq, 2006;Mason & Chuang, 2001;Morizio et al., 2021;Rabinowitch et al., 2013). This study supports the notion that empathy training programs are effective in increasing participants' levels of prosocial behaviors, which are strongly connected to empathy (Soliman et al., 2021;Teding van Berkhout et al., 2016). ...
Creating Compassion is an empathy-focused creative arts curriculum designed to provide short-term, low-cost, high-quality social–emotional learning (SEL) to communities and settings with limited resources. The present study sought to determine whether Creating Compassion was effective for increasing displays of prosocial behaviors and broad SEL skills for early elementary school students (n = 9) through a multiple baseline single-case design, as empathy has previously been posited as a core factor in global social–emotional skill development. Results from this study confirmed the hypothesis that Creating Compassion would increase observed prosocial behaviors with moderate effectiveness for children in first, second, and third grades, including those with identified social–emotional skill deficits. Participant scores on a pre/post assessment of global SEL competence also increased after intervention. Ultimately, findings from this study suggest the Creating Compassion intervention might be used by school psychologists and other group interventionists to expose their school communities to arts programming and engage them in a fun and creative approach to accessible early SEL intervention.
Impact Statement
This paper presents results from a combined arts and empathy training intervention, Creating Compassion. As an empathy-focused intervention, implementation of Creating Compassion led to increases in displays of prosocial behavior with moderate effectiveness. Increases in participants’ levels of overall SEL skill competence were also observed. Results from this study support the provision of a high-quality, low-cost, arts-based SEL program to benefit Low-Income and Economically Marginalized (LIEM) communities within educational settings.
... Suasana kelas pada umumnya akan positif dan anak-anak menikmati terlibat dalam aktivitas seni, pendidikan seni memainkan peran penting dalam pendidikan anak usia dini (Bautista et al., 2018). Pengayaan seni dapat membantu kesiapan sosial-emosional untuk belajar bagi anakanak berpenghasilan rendah yang berisiko mengalami masalah sekolah (Brown & Sax, 2013). Pengayaan seni dapat memberikan peluang penting untuk pengembangan keterampilan praakademik, karena banyak dari apa yang anak-anak lakukan seperti bermain, termasuk menyanyi, menggambar, dan menari, melibatkan indera dan otak untuk belajar (Greene & Sawilowsky, 2018). ...
Anak usia dini lebih mudah menangkap materi pembelajaran yang diberikan dengan mengimplementasikan prinsip bermain sambil belajar, termasuk melakukan kegiatan kreasi melalui aktivitas seni. Kegiatan berkreasi dengan aktivitas seni untuk anak usia dini dalam hal ini adalah kegiatan bernyanyi dan menggambar. Hasil penelitian bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan tentang pentingnya kegiatan seni di sekolah untuk kecerdasan majemuk anak. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah melakukan pendekatan kualitatif deskriptif, dengan teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan studi pustaka, wawancara terstruktur, dan observasi terhadap 4 orang guru, 1 orang kepala sekolah, dan 104 peserta didik sebagai sumber data di TK Pertiwi Jember dan TK Islam 01 Kauman Juwana Pati. Teknik keabsahan data menggunakan triangulasi metode. Simpulan penelitian, bahwa aktivitas seni sangat bermanfaat untuk anak usia dini dan memengaruhi kecerdasan anak dalam proses perkembangannya.
... Especially, the healing power of art is consulted in cases where children have heavier issues; for instance, in cases of traumatic incidents such as sexual abuse. It was identified that clay-based work used in art therapies have decreased the symptoms of trauma and increased the life skills of participants and created a sense of belonging whilst empowering them (Brown, 2020;Brown & Sax, 2013;Haynes, 2015;Morrison, 2020). ...
... Socioemotional development is sometimes assessed using observational measures involving independent observations of specific skills or patterns of behaviour (e.g., Brown and Sax 2013;Siu and Cheung 2016), while other studies rely on parental and teacher reports based on behaviour rating scales (e.g., Ritblatt et al. 2013;Williams and Berthelsen 2019). Assessments may also be administered directly to children. ...
Music is increasingly recognized as having a social role, insofar as it is linked to emotional regulation and to early interactions in infancy and the preschool years. The goal of this meta-analysis was to examine the impact of participating in an early childhood music programme on indices of socioemotional development in children under 6 years of age. The overall result showed a moderate effect size (N = 681, k = 11, d = 0.57, p < 0.001). Moderation analyses revealed that the type of assessment (observational measure, reported measure or other types of assessment) significantly influenced effect size (Q′ = 25.26, p < 0.001). No other moderation analysis was significant. Although these findings are promising, suggesting that participation in an early childhood music programme contribute to children’s socioemotional development, more rigorous studies are needed to assess the impact of participating in a music programme on socioemotional development.
... For example, participation in music-based activities (e.g., singing songs, listening to or dancing to music, playing musical instruments, etc.) has been positively associated with self-regulation (Williams, 2018), cognitive and intellectual development (Neville et al., 2008;Rauscher, 2009), 1 and motor development (Hallam, 2010). Further, music-based activities are often a component of arts-based and play-based educational programs, both of which have been effective at promoting learning in early childhood settings (Brown & Sax, 2013;Nicolopoulou et al., 2015). In particular, music has been found to support language and literacy outcomes (Bond, 2012;Franco et al., 2020;Moreno, 2009;Politimou et al., 2019). ...
This study reports preschool educators’ uses of music in educational settings, as well as challenges faced in incorporating music in the classroom in the U.S. Through a multiple-methods approach, data from two focus groups (N1 = 8, N2 = 6) and a survey (N = 119) are used to gain insight into how frequently preschool educators in the US use various types of music activities in their classrooms, for what purposes they do so, and what challenges they face in doing so. This study also sheds light on the current linguistic landscape of a sample of early childhood and care settings in the US, highlighting the importance of music activities as a tool to engage and teach children whose home language is different from the instructional language of English. Results indicate that preschool educators use music on a daily basis, for both academic and social-emotional purposes. Additionally, educators who have linguistically diverse students tend to use music more than those who have all English speakers in their classrooms. Finally, educators reported facing several challenges in accessing the necessary resources to lead music activities effectively in their classrooms.
... Parent-child music therapy efficacy studies have also indicated that joint active music participation supports improved child-parent interactions and enhanced impulse control and self-regulation skills (Malloch et al., 2012;Pasiali, 2012). Galarce and colleagues (2012) reported enhanced self-regulation in terms of inappropriate speaking to others, while Brown and Sax (2013) found that an arts enriched programme including music helped emotional regulation skills in low-income children when compared to non arts programmes. ...
There is accruing evidence which indicates that actively making music can contribute to the enhancement of a range of non-musical skills and lead to other beneficial outcomes.
... Na subcategoria exigências tria-se risco em indicadores de absentismo escolar, fraco comportamento pró-social e ausência de rotinas de estudo (e.g., Cordeiro et al., 2020;Legters & Balfanz, 2010;Neild et al., 2007). Na categoria "Recursos", rastreiam-se indicadores de risco nas dimensões recursos cognitivos, tais como déficits de atenção (Wolraich et al., 1998), déficit na memória de trabalho, na capacidade de planeamento, baixa capacidade de inibição (Thorell & Nyberg, 2008); recursos emocionais, tais como baixa autoestima, baixa regulação e imaturidade emocional (Bird & Sultman, 2010;Brown & Sax, 2013;Kratochwill & Shernoff, 2003); dificuldades de aprendizagem específicas na escrita (Maughan and Carroll, 2006), na consciência fonémica (Landerl et al, 2019), e sintomas de hiperatividade/impulsividade (Wolraich et al., 1998). ...
... Several recent studies have also investigated the relations between multi-component ECE program participation and SEL. For example, Brown and Sax (2013) reported on the SEL of preschoolers attending an arts-integrated Head Start site, the Settlement Music School's Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment program ("Kaleidoscope"). The Kaleidoscope site combined traditional early learning strategies with comprehensive arts programming (e.g., visual art classes, dance and creative movement, music). ...
Educators and researchers are increasingly interested in evaluating and promoting socio-emotional learning (SEL) beginning in early childhood (Newman & Dusunbury in 2015; Zigler & Trickett in American Psychologist 33(9):789–798 10.1037/0003-066X.33.9.789 , 1978). Decades of research have linked participation in high-quality early childhood education (ECE) programs (e.g., public prekindergarten, Head Start) to multidimensional wellbeing. ECE programs also have demonstrated potential to be implemented at large scales with strong financial returns on investment. However, relatively few studies have investigated the effects of ECE programs on SEL, particularly compared to smaller-scale, skills-based SEL interventions. Furthermore, among studies that have examined SEL, there is a general lack of consensus about how to define and measure SEL in applied settings. The present paper begins to address these gaps in several ways. First, it discusses conceptual and methodological issues related to developmentally and culturally sensitive assessment of young children’s socio-emotional functioning. Second, it reviews the empirical research literature on the impacts of three types of early childhood programs (general prekindergarten programs; multi-component prekindergarten programs; and universal skills-based interventions) on SEL. Finally, it highlights future directions for research and practice.
... Adams (2002); Cox (2005); Kimberly (2008), and Margaret (2009) emphasize the importance of drawing and painting in the expression of psychological, emotional, and cognitive features. Adams (2002); Cox (2005); Fleming (2008); Brooks (2009) ;Brown and Sax (2013); Puglionesi (2016); Rusu (2017), and Yu and Nagai (2020) emphasize the importance of drawing and painting in the expression of psychological, emotional, and cognitive features. ...
Purpose
This study compared the predictive power of specific categories of the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS) and Bender-Gestalt test in identifying the problems of students with SLDs.
Method
Forty elementary-school students with SLDs were selected from the SLD center of Babol, Iran, and 40 non-SLDs students were chosen from public schools, matched in terms of age, sex, and grade with the group with SLDs. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV), the Draw a Person Picking an Apple from a Tree (PPAT) test, four scales of FEATS for drawing scores, and the Bender-Gestalt test were administered. The data were analyzed by independent samples t-test, Pearson's correlation test, and MANOVA.
Results
The groups significantly differed on the PPAT test, and the students with SLDs had a lower mean score than the non-SLD students on three components of integration, realism, and perseveration, but not on rotation. On the Bender-Gestalt test, the two groups significantly differed on all four components of distortion, disintegration, perseveration, and rotation. The construct validity was confirmed between SLDs and the components of "integration and disintegration" and "realism and distortion" in the two groups. Moreover, the Bender-Gestalt test had a greater effect than the four components of the FEATS, but the difference was small.
Discussion
The use of PPAT with FEATS and Bender-Gestalt test can help diagnose children with SLDs.
... Children need to have opportunities where they can validate their own achievements, such as being prideful and respectful of their artworks. For instance, Brown and Sax (2013) observed that underserved children in arts-integrated preschools showed more positive emotions, including satisfaction, than those in traditional preschool classrooms and linked this to impacting longer-term socio-emotional functioning. ...
Latinx farmworker children are a vulnerable and disparate health population that confronts a myriad of threats to their emotional and behavioral health and subsequent development. Art therapy provides a potentially valuable and efficient strategy for preventing young children's mental health problems by providing a structured and engaging outlet for resolving the emotional sequelae of chronic adversity. A narrative-focused and trauma-processing art therapy program was implemented with 14 children aged between 3-5 years over 12 sessions in a bi-weekly format within a rural migrant head start program. We used a simple single group pre/posttest design to examine the impact of this intervention and saw improvement in all developmental areas using a specifically designed art therapy observation measure (ATC-PC) and a routine early development measure (LAP-3). However, it was unclear whether these changes were attributable to the art therapy program alone. Therefore, the findings of this pilot study warrant replication at a wider-scale. Additionally, the ATC-PC was shown to be a promising observation tool to document progress in art therapy with young children that also requires wider implementation and further testing.
... In addition, such activities contribute to the development of verbal and non-verbal communication skills of children with special needs (Havlat, 2006;Stephenson, 2006). When the studies in the literature are examined, there are also important studies which reveal that music has a positive effect on the development of social skills (Akıncı & Alpagut, 2017) and also contributes to children's development in learning (Brown, Benedett, and Armistead, 2010;Brown and Sax, 2013;Moreno Marques, Santos, Santos, Castro & Besson, 2007;Williams, Barrett, Welch, Abad and Broughton, 2015). ...
... For example, arts activities are thought to enhance the development of the self, including increasing self-knowledge (Hansen et al., 2003), as well as providing opportunities for identity exploration (Eccles & Barber, 1999) and involvement in self-defining experiences (Coatsworth & Sharp, 2013) among adolescents. The expressiveness of art and drama activities is also likely to foster emotion regulation (Brouillette, 2010;Brown & Sax, 2013;Larson & Brown, 2007;Winsler, Ducenne, & Koury, 2011) and strengthen creative processes (see the review by Kourkouta, Rarra, Mavroeidi, & Prodromidis, 2014). In addition, participation in the performing arts has been associated with developing positive social relationships in childhood and adolescence, likely through positive interactions with extrafamilial adults and peers who share similar interests (Hille & Schupp, 2014; see the review by Hallam, 2010). ...
The goals of the present study were (a) to explore different aspects of children's participation in structured performing arts activities (e.g., dance and music); and (b) to examine links between participation in performing arts and indices of socioemotional functioning. Participants were N = 166 children (75 boys and 91 girls) in Grade 1 (n = 70, Mage = 6.17 years, SD = 0.38), Grade 2 (n = 44, Mage = 7.07 years, SD = 0.26), and Grade 3 (n = 52, Mage = 8.06 years, SD = 0.37). Parents completed assessments of children's participation in performing arts (activity type, frequency, positive psychological engagement, and stress) and indices of socioemotional functioning. Among the results, children participated most often in dance (particularly girls) and music. There was some evidence to suggest that children were less engaged and experienced more stress in music compared to dance activities. However, participants in music were rated as having fewer peer relationship problems as compared to children who did not participate in performing arts activities. As well, stress in performing arts was positively associated with emotion problems and negatively associated with prosocial behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of the links between performing arts activities and young children's socioemotional functioning.
... Art therapy efektif dalam menangani para pasien disorder yang memiliki kecenderungan bertindak kekerasan (Broek, De Vos, & Bernstein, 2011;Malchiodi, 2003). Penelitian lain juga menunjukan bahwa Art therapy bisa menjadi sarana belajar anak yang tidak membosankan untuk menurunkan perilaku agresif, meningkatkan regulasi emosi dan sangat efektif bagi anak yang mengalami peristiwa traumatis karena art therapy bisa memfasilitasi ekspresi emosi dalam setting yang aman (Atkinson & Robson, 2012;Aviv, Regev, & Guttmann, 2014;Bishop, 2012;Brown & Sack, 2013;Samadzadeh, Abbasi, & Shahbazzadegan, 2013;Khadar, Bapaour, & Sabourimoghaddam, 2013). Pemanfaatan seni dapat membantu anak untuk mengamplifikasi hubungan interpersonal yang belum terselesaikan dan memungkinkan terapis untuk menyadari pengalaman anak terlepas dari kemampuan verbal (Malchiodi, 2003;Rankanen, 2014 (Alavinezhad, Mousavi, & Sohrabi, 2014;Malchiodi, 2003). ...
The purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of AKTIF Teacher training program to increase the teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching children with special needs. Untreated Control Group Design with Dependent pre-test and post-test sample method was used. 17 teachers were selected through purposive sampling method as experiment group and 5 teachers as control group. One-Way ANOVA test showed the three methods (case discussion, roleplay, and simulation) indicatedno fundamental difference in improving self-efficacy (F = 2.852, p = .091). Data analysis using the Mann Whitney U Test showed that the case discussion method significantly increased self-efficacy (zcase discussion = -2.410, p = .016; zsimulation = - 0.754, p = .451; zrole play = -1.916, p = .055). Wilcoxon-signed rank test showed that case discussion (p = 0.043) and roleplay (p = 0.035) were significant to improve self-efficacy, as opposed to simulation method which was not (p = 0.063).
... The social-emotional-cultural learning space of the music group in a community context An arts enrichment programme for preschool children from low-income families (Brown and Sax 2013), found that the delivery of core EY learningwhen enriched with culturally-sensitive and appropriate daily music, creative movement and visual arts classesresulted in increased pride, happiness, interest, positive emotions and greater emotional regulation amongst those children who attended, compared with their peers. The implication from the study was that arts enrichment may help low-income children's social-emotional readiness for school. ...
Young children’s speech and communication skills have been in the spotlight in recent years, often in association with parental socio-economic status and children’s ‘readiness’ for school. Finding innovative and open-ended ways to encourage children with communication difficulties to engage in interactive play was the premise for this action research project. By combining the theoretical knowledge and expertise of speech and language therapists with those of early childhood music-arts practitioners, the interdisciplinary research team expanded their understanding and practical approaches. Caregivers and children aged 24–48 months attended weekly SALTMusic¹1 Speech and language therapy-music.View all notes sessions. The team reflected together on their observations after every session, completing the ‘SALTMusic Scale’ for each child. Drawing together analyses from this tool, and other data collection methods, it was evident that children’s communication improved when the need to talk was removed and children and caregivers were encouraged to play with sound and make music together. This is an important study offering an evidence-informed approach to working with children and their caregivers that can relieve anxiety and build confidence. The quality of practice in the field is impacted by an increasingly reflective workforce who place theory and research as integral elements of their practice.
... 29-30). Brown and Sax (2013) found greater emotional regulation and positive emotional expression among students of an artsintegrated Head Start program in comparison with students at a comparable preschool. In a quasi-experimental evaluation study of multiple arts education programs, Holochwost, et al. (2018) also found a positive effect on engagement among a subset of students: treatment students who were engaged in school before the programs began maintained engagement, while previously engaged comparison students became less engaged in school. ...
... Within the early education and care sector, professional qualifications such as certificates and diplomas have little consideration of music as either a content area or a teaching and learning strategy (Letts, 2015). Paradoxically, there is a substantial and growing body of literature that evidences the contributions of music learning and engagement to young children's development across a range of factors (for example, Moreno et al., 2009;Brown et al., 2010;Brown and Sax, 2013;Williams et al., 2015;Bugos and DeMarie, 2017). ...
This paper reports the findings of a study that aimed to identify the music beliefs and values of educators in early childhood education and care settings in Australia. The aims of the study were 2-fold: to adapt and pilot a survey of music beliefs and values which might be implemented subsequently nationally in childcare settings; and, secondly, to identify the music beliefs and values held by early childhood and care educators concerning music in children's learning. The research questions that guided this component of the study were: What is the profile of early childhood and care educators? What beliefs and values for music engagement are held by early childhood and care educators? What shapes early childhood and care educators' music beliefs and values? Findings indicated that educators' beliefs and values on all items are above the mid-point indicating overall positive attitudes toward music despite the majority having no formal qualifications in music or a history of instrumental performance and/or singing. Given the overall positive attitudes toward music we suggest there is enormous potential within this population for further professional learning and development targeted at music and its potential wider benefits in young children's learning and lives.
La armonización de lo cognitivo con lo emocional debería guiar los esfuerzos de toda práctica docente. El objetivo es realizar una revisión sistemática sobre la evidencia científica dedicada a programas musicales dirigidos a la etapa de Educación Infantil (EI) para identificar las características de los mismos. Se utilizaron las directrices de PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes) y PICOS (population, intervention, comparator, outcome, study characteristics) a través de 5 bases de datos electrónicas desde 2010 hasta 2020. Fueron incluidos 12 artículos. Los hallazgos en la literatura muestran un escaso uso de la música en educación. Entre las conclusiones se destaca que, en la última década del transcurso de programas musicales, apenas son los estudios relacionados con la etapa de EI.
El Sistema-inspired music education programs aim to positively alter the life trajectory of historically underserved youth, with hypothesized benefits in cognitive and social development. Yet, there has been limited rigorous study of these programs. Using an randomized control trial design, we examine the effects of El Sistema programming on youth executive function and social–emotional learning among first-time participants (kindergarten and first grade), including a large representation of non-White and low-socioeconomic status (SES) participants. We do not observe the main effects of programming following 1 year of participation but do find positive effects across some demographic subgroups. This study contributes to ongoing research on the effects of music education programming for child development and executive function measurement for youth. Results can additionally inform the strategic development of similar initiatives aiming to foster youth development, including those with a focus on historically underserved youth through music programming.
Many difficult behaviors are rooted in a lack of executive function (EF) skills. EF includes a variety of skills including attention, persistence, and regulating emotions, among others. It is important for all students to learn the skills that contribute to developing appropriate EF skills, but it is especially important for students with disabilities to learn these skills to be successful in school. This article includes a summary of the variety of specific EF skills, existing music research in these skill areas, and strategies teachers can use to improve EF skills in inclusive music classrooms.
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Emotions provides a state-of-the-art review of research on the role of emotions in creativity. This volume presents the insights and perspectives of sixty creativity scholars from thirteen countries who span multiple disciplines, including developmental, social, and personality psychology; industrial and organizational psychology; neuroscience; education; art therapy, and sociology. It discusses affective processes – emotion states, traits, and emotion abilities – in relation to the creative process, person, and product, as well as two major contexts for expression of creativity: school, and work. It is a go-to source for scholars who need to enhance their understanding of a specific topic relating to creativity and emotion, and it provides students and researchers with a comprehensive introduction to creativity and emotion broadly.
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Emotions provides a state-of-the-art review of research on the role of emotions in creativity. This volume presents the insights and perspectives of sixty creativity scholars from thirteen countries who span multiple disciplines, including developmental, social, and personality psychology; industrial and organizational psychology; neuroscience; education; art therapy, and sociology. It discusses affective processes – emotion states, traits, and emotion abilities – in relation to the creative process, person, and product, as well as two major contexts for expression of creativity: school, and work. It is a go-to source for scholars who need to enhance their understanding of a specific topic relating to creativity and emotion, and it provides students and researchers with a comprehensive introduction to creativity and emotion broadly.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) standards and policies are quickly being adopted across the United States. States and school districts are now requiring demonstrations of SEL in schools and hoping for evidence that school subjects, including art education, can successfully meet those requirements and provide that evidence. This article reports the results of a review of research on the relationship between art education and SEL for three purposes: (1) to illustrate the process of a systematic review of research in a small field, (2) to propose a foundation on which researchers can build, and (3) to map empirical research results about preK–12 SEL in art education for instructional practice. The article contributes to research by offering an instrument to aid systematic reviews in the field. It also summarizes the conclusions of the found empirical research articles on SEL in preK–12 art education contexts.
This Element focuses on the development of drawing (and painting) in childhood. The author begins by examining children's representational drawing, a topic that has received quite wide attention from the nineteenth century on. The author then turns to issues that have received far less attention and discusses the aesthetic property of expression, weighing the claim that young children's highly expressive drawings bear an affinity to twentieth century modernist art. The author then examines the function of drawing for children's emotional development. Next, looking at art prodigies, the author turns to the how of drawing, considering the relation of drawing talent to IQ and to visual-spatial skills. Finally, the author considers the relation between development and education in art and how educators can best nurture children's artistic development.
Research has shown that young children’s socio-emotional development may benefit from participating in a music programme. In this study, we explored the association between participation in a general music programme and the development of socio-emotional skills in relation to the duration of the programme. Children aged 4 and 5 (N=50), from a low socio-economic neighbourhood, participated in an 8- or 15-week music programme. Children’s social skills development and emotion comprehension were measured. Teachers reported an increase in the social interaction and independence skills scores of the younger children and a decrease in the cooperation skills scores of the older children. Additionally, the older children showed an increase in their comprehension of emotions. The duration of the programme, however, did not yield any significant effect. Results suggest that the association between participation in a music programme and the development of social-emotional skills may be influenced by the age of the children.
Music early learning programs (MELPs) that provide music services to parents and carers of children aged birth through 8 years are proliferating. Parents make significant financial and social investments in MELPs, yet little is known of their motivations and aspirations nor of the enduring outcomes of participation. This article reports the findings of an interview study with 10 parents, 1 grandparent, and 8 child former participants in a MELP program in regional Australia that investigated perceptions of MELP participation. Findings indicate that parents come from a range of musical backgrounds. Reasons and aspirations for MELP enrolment encompass developing both parents’ and children’s musical skills, providing social benefits for parent and child, exposure to musical experience, value-adding to their child’s education and expanding the family social circle. Enduring outcomes include developed music knowledge and skills, future investments, physical and emotional development, and new patterns of learning that are potentially transferable. Findings suggest that children arrive at formal schooling with a rich repertoire of music, a capacity to engage in embodied musical experience, and a set of expectations concerning their participation in music. Such knowledge holds implications for the ways in which music learning might be structured within the early childhood classroom.
This study examined the impact of an in-school dance curriculum on the social-emotional development of at-risk preschoolers in a southern California public preschool program. The preschoolers (N = 69) participated in dance for thirty minutes, once a week, over an entire academic year. We compared the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP) scores in the Social-Emotional domain from Fall 2018 to Spring 2019 and controlled for dance by analyzing scores from four sites who received dance and two sites who did not receive any dance. Our findings included an increase in preschoolers’ DRDP scores in the category of Integrating Social-Emotional Skills among those sites who received dance versus sites who did not receive dance. There were no significant changes among scores in the category of Building-Later. Through this study, dance was shown to support preschoolers’ ability to integrate and build social-emotional skills, strengthen their self-identity, and establish meaningful relationships with peers and adults.
This meta-analysis summarized the effects of universal and targeted social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions in 48 studies on the development of social and emotional skills and the reduction of problem behaviors in 15,498 preschool students. For universal SEL interventions delivered to all students, a random-effects model with 33 primary studies showed small to medium effects for the overall development of social and emotional skills (Hedges’s g = .34) and for the reduction of problem behaviors (g = .32), with an overall grand mean of g = .35. For targeted interventions, delivered to at-risk students identified as being in need of additional supports, a random-effects model with 15 primary studies showed medium effects for the overall development of social and emotional skills (Hedges’s g = .44) and for the reduction of problem behaviors (g = .50), with an overall grand mean of g = .48. A meta-regression model showed that intervention program accounted for 83% of heterogeneity in the overall effect size for universal interventions. Overall, this meta-analysis demonstrated that preschool children benefit from SEL interventions in different contexts, particularly those who were identified as being in need of early intervention. Moreover, best practices for preschool SEL interventions may differ from best practices for K–12 students, given the developmental uniqueness of the preschool years.
Considering the increasing number of immigrant students attending the school system, the Italian context is a particularly appropriate example to study the phenomenon of bullying focused on nationality background. Students with an immigrant background are defined as those students who are either foreign-born or have at least one foreign-born parent (OECD, 2018). The focus of this paper is to present the key elements of a formative intervention based on art-laboratory to reduce bullying of students with an immigrant background. This objective is especially significant given that stressful life events, like bullying, can lead to depression, anxiety, and symptoms of other psychological problems, such as sleep disorders (Swearer, Hymel, 2015). In order to select the relevant factors, we briefly introduce the results of a national survey conducted in the context of a wider research program on bullying for modelling more adequate educational interventions (Marini et al., 2019).
Self-regulation skills are an important predictor of school readiness and early school achievement. Research identifies that experiences of early stress in disadvantaged households can affect young children’s brain architecture, often manifested in poor self-regulatory functioning. Although there are documented benefits of coordinated movement activities to improve self-regulation, few interventions have focused exclusively on music and rhythmic activities. This study explores the effectiveness of a preschool intervention, delivered across 8 weeks, which focused on coordinated rhythmic movement with music to improve self-regulation and executive function. The study involved 113 children across three preschools in disadvantaged communities. The intervention group received 16 sessions of a rhythm and movement program over 8 weeks, whereas the control group undertook the usual preschool program. Executive functions were directly assessed, and teachers reported on children’s self-regulation before and after the intervention. Path analyses found positive intervention effects for emotional regulation reported by teachers and, for boys, on the measure of shifting in the executive function assessment. Teacher-reported cognitive and behavioral regulation also improved in one research site. These early findings suggest that a rhythm and movement intervention has the potential to support the development of self-regulation skills in preschool; however, further research is required.
Early childhood curricula reflect guiding principles or beliefs about the knowledge, skills, and behavior that are considered important for learning in the early childhood setting. This study examined linkages between teachers’ and young children’s expression of and talk about emotions during interactions in early childhood programs, using either the Creative Curriculum or the more emotion-focused Responsive Classroom approach. The research also examined teachers’ and children’s emotion-related behavior in relation to the gender composition of the interactions and teachers’ social-emotional teaching practices. Participants were 117 preschoolers (64 girls) and their teachers. Teachers and children in the Creative Curriculum classrooms displayed proportionately more negative emotional expressions than their counterparts in classrooms adopting the Responsive Classroom approach. Teachers’ negative emotional expressions were also more likely when children expressed negative emotions. Teachers’ and children’s negative expressions were less likely when teachers reported high use of social-emotional teaching practices. Teachers’ emotion talk was also more likely when social-emotional teaching practices were high. Gender composition of the interactions was also predictive of teachers’ emotion-related behavior. Discussion focuses on the important effect of curricula in supporting teachers’ and young children’s expression of and emotion talk in the early childhood classroom.
Deficits in self-regulation (SR) have been proposed as a potential contributor to child overweight/obesity, a public health concern that disproportionately affects children living in poverty. Although poverty is known to influence SR, SR has not been considered as a potential mechanism in the association between poverty and child obesity. The aim of the current paper was to systematically review the current literature to determine whether SR is a viable mechanism in the relationship between child exposure to poverty and later risk of overweight/obesity. We systematically review and summarize literature in three related areas with the aim of generating a developmentally informed model that accounts for the consistent association between poverty and child weight, specifically how: (1) poverty relates to child weight, (2) poverty relates to child SR, and (3) SR is associated with weight. To quantify the strength of associations for each pathway, effect sizes were collected and aggregated. Findings from the studies included suggest small but potentially meaningful associations between poverty and child SR and between SR and child weight. The conceptualization and measurement of SR, however, varied across literature studies and made it difficult to determine whether SR can feasibly connect poverty to child obesity. Although SR may be a promising potential target for obesity intervention for low-income children, additional research on how SR affects risk of obesity is crucial, especially based on the lack of success of the limited number of SR-promoting interventions for improving children’s weight outcomes.
Scientific advances in the field of emotions suggest a framework for conceptualizing the emotion-related aspects of prevention programs that aim to enhance children's socioemotional competence and prevent the emergence of behavior problems and psychopathology. A conception of emotions as inherently adaptive and motivational and the related empirical evidence from several disciplines and specialities suggest 7 principles for developing preventive interventions: the utilization of positive and negative emotions, emotion modulation as a mediator of emotion utilization, emotion patterns in states and traits, different processes of emotion activation, emotion communication in early life, and the development of connections for the modular and relatively independent emotions and cognitive systems. Each principle's practical implications and application in current prevention programs are discussed.
The present study applied a semiparametric mixture model to a sample of 284 low-income boys to model developmental trajectories of overt conduct problems from ages 2 to 8. As in research on older children, 4 developmental trajectories were identified: a persistent problem trajectory, a high-level desister trajectory, a moderate-level desister trajectory, and a persistent low trajectory. Follow-up analyses indicated that initially high and low groups were differentiated in early childhood by high child fearlessness and elevated maternal depressive symptomatology. Persistent problem and high desister trajectories were differentiated by high child fearlessness and maternal rejecting parenting. The implications of the results for early intervention research are discussed, with an emphasis on the identification of at-risk parent - child dyads.
From the cognitive theory perspective that emotions are cognition dependent and contain cognitive components, Ortony and Turner (1990) questioned the validity of the concept of basic emotions. They argued that the so-called basic emotions were neither psychologically or biologically "primitive" nor "irreducible building blocks" for generating the "great variety of emotional experiences." In the biosocial theory tradition, researchers have identified multiple noncognitive activators of emotion and demonstrated the usefulness of defining the essential components of emotion as phenomena that do not require cognitive mediators or constituents. In this framework, emotions are seen as basic because their biological and social functions are essential in evolution and adaptation. Particular emotions are called basic because they are assumed to have innate neural substrates, innate and universal expressions, and unique feeling-motivational states. The great variety of emotional experiences is explained as a function of emotion-cognition interactions that result in affective-cognitive structures.
This investigation is an examination of musical practices, musical preparation of teachers, and music education needs as reported by early childhood professionals in the United States. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered via a survey mailed to a random sample drawn from the database of preschool centers accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The survey was based on criteria in the MENC national standards for pre-K music (1994b) and Opportunity-to-Learn Standards-PreK Music (1994a). Returned surveys (n = 293) reflect diversity of teacher preparation in music, how and why music is used in the early childhood curriculum, and what the music education needs are in these centers. Recommendations are offered to those concerned with the music education needs of young children and their teachers.
Empirical research shows that poor emotional competence is an early risk factor for the development of psychopathology. Numerous school-based prevention programs have been developed with the goal of decreasing behavior problems. Several of these programs include a discrete emotions component, but none of them are solely or primarily guided by emotion theory for their design and implementation. The prevention program described in this paper, the emotions course (EC), is a theoretically-coherent program based on differential emotions theory and is designed to be implemented by teachers in Head Start classrooms. Children participating in a pilot implementation of EC showed larger increases in emotion knowledge and less growth in negative emotion expression than their peers in control classrooms. These findings provide initial support for EC. Future implementations of the program need increased monitoring of implementation fidelity as well as additional methods to assess the success of the program.
Research Findings: Although the role of language and private speech in the development of behavioral self-regulation has been studied, relations between behavioral self-regulation and children's experiences with other symbolic systems, such as music, have not yet been explored. Eighty-nine 3- and 4-year-old children (42 of whom had been enrolled in Kindermusik music and movement classes, and 47 demographically similar children who had not experienced structured early childhood music classes) completed a battery of laboratory self-regulation tasks and a selective attention task during which their private speech was reliably transcribed and categorized. Children currently enrolled in Kindermusik classes showed better self-regulation than those who were not currently enrolled (d = .41), and they also used more relevant private speech during the selective attention task (d = .57), a verbal strategy that was positively related to performance. Children exposed to the music program were also more likely to engage in the facilitative strategy of singing/humming to themselves during a waiting period in which they had to inhibit their desire to examine a gift, and they were less likely to call out socially to the experimenter, a strategy negatively associated with performance and self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Implications for early childhood education are discussed.
Research Findings: Fostering the social competence of at-risk preschoolers would be facilitated by knowing which of children's emotion skills are most salient to social outcomes. We examined the emotion skills and social competence of 44 children enrolled in a Head Start program. Emotion skills were examined in terms of children's emotional lability and emotion regulation, whereas social competence was measured in terms of three aspects of preschoolers' social relationships: social skills, student–teacher relationships, and peer likeability. Although emotion regulation emerged as an important predictor for social skills and positive relationships with teachers, emotional lability was a significant predictor of student–teacher conflict and peer likeability. In fact, emotional lability mediated the relation between student–teacher conflict and peer likeability. Practice or Policy: The findings are discussed in terms of the complex associations between children's emotion skills and early social relationships.
The effects of an eight-week instructional program in creative dance/movement on the social competence of low-income preschool children were assessed in this study utilizing a scientifically rigorous design. Forty preschool children from a large Head Start program were randomly assigned to participate in either an experimental dance program or an attention control group. Teachers and parents, blind to the children's group membership, rated children's social competence both before and after the program, using English and Spanish versions of the Social Competence Behavior Evaluation: Preschool Edition. The results revealed significantly greater positive gains over time in the children's social competence and both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems for the experimental group compared with the control group. Small-group creative dance instruction for at-risk preschoolers appears to be an excellent mechanism for enhancing social competence and improving behavior. The implications for early childhood education and intervention are discussed.
Our review of research suggests that family poverty has selective effects on child development. Most important for policy are indications that deep or persistent poverty early in childhood affects adversely the ability and achievement of children. Although the 1996 welfare reforms have spurred many welfare-to-work transitions, their time limits and, especially, sanctions are likely to deepen poverty among some families. We suggest ways policies might be aimed at preventing either economic deprivation itself or its effects.
We examined two mechanisms by which creating visual art may serve as a form of short-term mood repair. After viewing a film
that induced a negatively valenced mood, participants were given a self-report affect grid that assessed mood valence and
arousal. Participants then engaged in one of three tasks: creating a drawing expressing their current mood (venting), creating
a drawing depicting something happy (positive emotion), or scanning a sheet for specific symbols (distraction control). Mood
valence and arousal were then reassessed. Arousal remained unchanged after the interventions in all conditions. Valence became
more positive in all three conditions, but the greatest improvement occurred after the positive emotion intervention. Valence
improved no more after venting than after the control task. Results show that in the short-term, attending to and venting
one’s negative feelings through art-making is a less effective means of improving mood than is turning away from a negative
mood to something more positive. These findings are consistent with research on the beneficial effects of positive emotions
and cast doubt on the often assumed view that artists improve their well being by expressing suffering.
Emotions and behaviors observed during challenging tasks are hypothesized to be valuable indicators of young children's motivation, the assessment of which may be particularly important for children at risk for school failure. The current study demonstrated reliability and concurrent validity of a new observational assessment of motivation in young children. Head Start graduates completed challenging puzzle and trivia tasks during their kindergarten year. Children's emotion expression and task engagement were assessed based on their observed facial and verbal expressions and behavioral cues. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that observed persistence and shame predicted teacher ratings of children's academic achievement, whereas interest, anxiety, pride, shame, and persistence predicted children's social skills and learning-related behaviors. Children's emotional and behavioral responses to challenge thus appeared to be important indicators of school success. Observation of such responses may be a useful and valid alternative to self-report measures of motivation at this age.
This study investigated the role of children's emotion regulation skills and academic success in kindergarten, using a sample of 325 five-year-old children. A mediational analysis addressed the potential mechanisms through which emotion regulation relates to children's early academic success. Results indicated that emotion regulation was positively associated with teacher reports of children's academic success and productivity in the classroom and standardized early literacy and math achievement scores. Contrary to predictions, child behavior problems and the quality of the student teacher relationship did not mediate these relations. However, emotion regulation and the quality of the student-teacher relationship uniquely predicted academic outcomes even after accounting for IQ. Findings are discussed in terms of how emotion regulation skills facilitate children's development of a positive student-teacher relationship and cognitive processing and independent learning behavior, both of which are important for academic motivation and success.
The present study evaluated the efficacy of a multicomponent, classroom-based intervention in reducing preschoolers' behavior problems. The Chicago School Readiness Project model was implemented in 35 Head Start classrooms using a clustered-randomized controlled trial design. Results indicate significant treatment effects (ds = 0.53-0.89) for teacher-reported and independent observations of children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Moreover, there was some evidence for the moderating role of child gender, race/ethnic group membership, and exposure to poverty-related risk, with stronger effects of intervention for some groups of children than for others. Findings contribute to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood.
Although hundreds of studies have documented the association between family poverty and children's health, achievement, and behavior, few measure the effects of the timing, depth, and duration of poverty on children, and many fail to adjust for other family characteristics (for example, female headship, mother's age, and schooling) that may account for much of the observed correlation between poverty and child outcomes. This article focuses on a recent set of studies that explore the relationship between poverty and child outcomes in depth. By and large, this research supports the conclusion that family income has selective but, in some instances, quite substantial effects on child and adolescent well-being. Family income appears to be more strongly related to children's ability and achievement than to their emotional outcomes. Children who live in extreme poverty or who live below the poverty line for multiple years appear, all other things being equal, to suffer the worst outcomes. The timing of poverty also seems to be important for certain child outcomes. Children who experience poverty during their preschool and early school years have lower rates of school completion than children and adolescents who experience poverty only in later years. Although more research is needed on the significance of the timing of poverty on child outcomes, findings to date suggest that interventions during early childhood may be most important in reducing poverty's impact on children.
Recent research consistently reports that persistent poverty has more detrimental effects on IQ, school achievement, and socioemotional functioning than transitory poverty, with children experiencing both types of poverty generally doing less well than never-poor children. Higher rates of perinatal complications, reduced access to resources that buffer the negative effects of perinatal complications, increased exposure to lead, and less home-based cognitive stimulation partly account for diminished cognitive functioning in poor children. These factors, along with lower teacher expectancies and poorer academic-readiness skills, also appear to contribute to lower levels of school achievement among poor children. The link between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's socioemotional functioning appears to be mediated partly by harsh, inconsistent parenting and elevated exposure to acute and chronic stressors. The implications of research findings for practice and policy are considered.
Differential emotions theory (DET) packs the infant. Infants gain possession of a limited set of discrete emotions in the first months of life, and these emotions are organized as a modular system with a high degree of independent functioning. The number of emotions, their expressive signatures, and their links to one another undergo remarkable change over time, to be sure, as do system organization and articulation. The core processes in emotional development, however, consist of the construction and consolidation of affective—cognitive structures, which mediate intersystem coordination of the emotions, cognitive, and motor systems.
In this article, the authors bring together the central ideas of the prominent thinkers in arts education and arts in learning to construct a comprehensive case for the importance of the arts in every child's education. The roles of the arts in cognition, equitable access to meaning, student motivation, and cultural representation and understanding are explored. Illustrations are drawn from visible national projects translating the ideas into practice. Teacher voices on the power of the arts in the. learning of their children are introduced.
Research Findings: This study examined relations between contextual risk, maternal negative emotionality, and preschool teacher reports of the negative emotion dysregulation of children from economically disadvantaged families. Contextual risk was represented by cumulative indexes of family and neighborhood adversity. The results showed a direct pathway linking family adversity to child negative emotion dysregulation and indirect pathways for both family and neighborhood adversity through maternal negative emotionality. Practice or Policy: The results suggest the importance of conceptualizing distal and contextual aspects of the ecology of disadvantage as well as more proximal caregiving variables in interventions targeted for young children showing negative emotion dysregulation.
We investigated whether artmaking improves mood, and if so, whether this effect is best explained by "catharsis" or "redirection." In Experiment 1, participants viewed tragic images and then either drew a picture based on their feelings or copied shapes. Those who drew exhibited more positive mood after drawing; those who copied shapes did not. Mood improved equally for those who drew negative and nonnegative images, suggesting that for some, catharsis led to improved mood and that for others, redirection led to improved mood. In Experiment 2, to test whether artmaking improved mood simply because people were distracted by making a drawing, we gave participants a word puzzle to complete, a task that does not allow expression of feeling through symbolic content. Completion of a word puzzle did not improve mood. These results suggest that artmaking increases the pleasure dimension of mood and does so via either catharsis or redirection.
The after-school City School Outreach youth program captured the attention of high school male students by offering them a physically and psychologically safe environment to talk about issues they faced. The students of color who attended the program used various forms of creative written expression (i.e., poetry, spoken word, and hip hop) to document and share their lived realities as African American and Latino youth. An analysis of their writings and subsequent interviews revealed a variety of coping strategies and resources that these resilient adolescent males of color used to transcend adversity in their environment. When adolescent males of color have a strong sense of cultural pride and awareness, they are able to construct a healthy self-concept that assists them in acts of agency and resistance against negative psychological forces in their environment. These students used familial and nonfamilial support mechanisms, such as peers, church, and mentors, to assist them in reducing the stressful impact of racist stereotypes and community fragmentation. In light of these findings, teachers who wish to serve as a source of resilience in the lives of youth of color must make a concerted effort to acknowledge and appreciate differences and commonalities that exist among African American, Latino, and European-based mainstream culture. By building a healthy attitude toward their own culture, young people achieve the greater sense of direction and personal coherence needed for positive identity formation. When educators provide time and space for youth to examine and articulate their lives, social and intellectual climates form that can enrich and enliven their educational process.
This short-term longitudinal study examined whether emotion regulation and emotion understanding made unique contributions towards at-risk preschoolers' classroom adaptation. To address this question, we assessed children's emotion regulation and their understanding of emotions in both self (self-awareness, emotion coping) and in others (emotion recognition, affective perspective taking, situation knowledge). Participants were 49 children (22 boys and 27 girls) who attended a Head Start program for low-income children. Seventy percent of this sample was Caucasian, with the remainder being of Latino, African American or biracial ethnicity. Emotion regulation at the start of the school year was associated with school adjustment at year's end, whereas early emotional lability/negativity predicted poorer outcomes. Children who made a smooth adjustment to preschool also were better able to take another person's affective perspective and to identify situations that would provoke different emotional responses. Emotion regulation and understanding made unique contributions towards school adjustment, even when controlling for potential confounds, including behavior problems and verbal abilities. Teachers appeared to influence children's emotional competence by serving an important regulatory function, especially for older preschoolers at-risk.
This article is a response to a number of articles that use a culturally relevant prevention (CRP) approach for ethnic and racial minorities. The reaction is from a research practitioner's viewpoint. The authors argue in favor of determining an operational definition of cultural relevance by implementing prevention services with fidelity in the field and understanding what structural components of CRPs are minimally necessary for the effective operation of the prevention programs. Field personnel also need to identify reliable ways to involve in planning those individuals who represent service recipient characteristics. The article closes with a recommendation that research practitioners pursue an active evaluation agenda aimed at further standardizing and quantifying the effectiveness of CRP strategies for underserved racial and ethnic groups.
A core principle of differential emotions theory (DET) is that emotions operate as systems (Izard, 1971; Izard et al., 1965). An emotion is a complex system in the sense that it emerges from interactions of constituent neurohormonal, motoric, and experiential processes. Although person- environment transactions play a role in the development of healthy emo- tions, the potential for each component of each discrete emotion system self-organized in phylogeny and emerged as an evolutionary adaptation. Individual emotions also coassemble with other emotions to form contin- gent emotion patterns that stabilize over repetitions and time. Thus, discrete emotions are both the product and stuff of system organization. The sys- tems are self-organizing in the sense that recursive interactions among component processes generate emergent properties. This system perspective of DET fits well with the general emphasis of dynamic systems (DS) theories of development on the self-organization of the structure of behavior. Both DS theories of development and DET have the central theoretical goal of understanding organization and pattern in complex systems, without recourse to some deus ex machina (Izard, 1977; Smith and Thelen, 1993; Thelen, 1989). For both theories, structure and complexity emerge from constituent processes to yield behavioral perform- ances that vary among individuals and within individuals over time. Un- derstanding the individual variation is a main theoretical concern of both DET and DS theories of development. Given these commonalities, is there anything to be gained by translating DET into the language of dynamic systems? Does the DS framework add body to DET, or is it simply a new bottle for old wine? We explore this issue in this chapter in several ways. First, we apply core dynamic concepts in describing the generation and operation of discrete emotions and emo- tion patterns from the perspective of DET. That is, we explore the ''fit'' of
In this study of low income preschoolers (N = 60), we examined relations between three facets of emotional competence: emotion knowledge, level of negative emotion expression, and emotion regulation; and their associations with indicators of classroom adjustment. Emotion knowledge was positively related to positive emotion regulation but was not related to negative emotion expression or negative dysregulation. Negative emotion expression related to emotion regulation variables in expected directions. Negative emotion expression was associated with aggression and social skills after covarying verbal ability, age, and emotion knowledge. Negative dysregulation was related in expected directions to aggression, anxiety, and social skills after covarying verbal ability, age, emotion knowledge, and negative emotion expression. Positive emotion regulation was related negatively to anxiety and positively to social skills after covarying all other variables in the model. Results are discussed with regard to using the emotional competence domain to understand how emotion processing relates to early childhood adjustment.
Effective regulatory skills are essential in busy preschool classroom environments where children must maintain some control over their emotions and behavior to interact effectively with peers and teachers. Regulatory abilities can play a crucial role in a child's successful adjustment to preschool. We investigated whether individual differences in dysregulation (emotional and behavioral) as observed in the naturalistic classroom context were associated with peer social competence and teacher ratings of classroom adjustment in a sample of low-income preschoolers. Naturalistic observational methods were used to assess dysregulated emotions and behaviors in Head Start classrooms. Findings demonstrate that although displays of observed dysregulation were relatively brief, about one-quarter of children showed high levels of dysregulation, and individual differences in dysregulated behavior predicted teacher-rated classroom adjustment and peer conflict. Research results are discussed with regard to implications for classroom practice and prevention.
Successful preschool transition is important for future educational success. We used brief functional screenings to identify low‐income children at risk for difficulty transitioning into preschool. Functional screenings were conducted for 163 children prior to enrollment, in a naturalistic peer setting, and focused on multiple domains important for successful classroom transition, including social and emotional skills as well as cognitive and language abilities. Children were assigned a transition risk rating based on strengths and/or concerns in language, cognition, externalizing/internalizing, social skills, and affective tone. Social and emotional classroom behaviors were primary outcomes of interest due to the importance of early socioemotional competence for later adjustment. Outcomes were assessed using multiple methods and multiple informants, including live classroom observations. The brief functional screening predicted outcomes almost one year later. Findings are discussed regarding implications for incorporating a whole‐child, functional approach to existing screening practices, and applying developmental research methods to prevention science.
The 20 articles in this volume provide varying perspectives on the concepts of multiculturalism, multiethnicity, and global literacy and how to correct art curricula to include the diversity. The development and application of viable multiethnic curricula is a function of the interrelationship of pedagogy and social-cultural realities. The articles focus on various cultural, ethnic, pedagogical, and historical issues in art. Some of the articles include: (1) "Teaching Art to Disadvantaged Black Students: Strategies for a Learning Style" (Leo F. Twiggs); (2) "The Minority Family as a Mediator for Their Children's Art and Academic Education" (Bernard Young); (3) "Afro-American Culture and the White Ghetto" (Eugene Grigsby, Jr.); (4) "Art and Culture in a Technological Society" (Vesta A. H. Daniel); (5) "Teaching Art in a Multicultural/Multiethnic Society" (Carmen Armstrong); (6) "Multiculturalism in Visual Arts Education: Are America's Educational Institutions Ready for Multiculturalism?" (Murry Norman DePillars); (7) "Children's Drawings: A Comparison of Two Cultures" (W. Lambert Brittain); (8) "Multiculturalism and Art Education" (Judith Mariahazy); (9) "A Portrait of a Black Art Teacher of Preadolescents in the Inner City: A Qualitative Description" (Mary Stokrocki); (10) "Shattered Fantasy: Minority Access to Careers in Art Education" (Esther Page Hill); and (11) "Concepts and Values of Black and White Art Instructors Affecting the Transmission of the Black Visual Aesthetic in Historically Black Colleges and Universities" (Oscar L. Logan) and "A Chronological Minority Bibliography" (Elizabeth Ann Shumaker). A list of the 21 contributors follows the articles. (CK)
Designed to provide practical and comprehensive assistance to family child care providers in a range of settings, this curriculum consists of two parts. Part 1, Setting the Stage, helps caregivers formulate a philosophy of child care, understand child development, prepare their homes, and plan their programs. It includes many ideas for making the home environment safe and inviting, selecting the right kinds of materials, managing the day, guiding children's learning and behavior, and building a partnership with parents. Part 2, Activities, offers ideas on ways to select materials and plan experiences that help infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children grow and develop. The nine types of activities described in Part 2 are: dramatic play, blocks, toys, art, books, sand and water, cooking, music and movement, and outdoor play. (RH)
The arts are the great equalizer in education. Regardless of native language, ability, or disability, music, art, and drama are accessible to all. Because the arts are largely nonverbal and focus on creativity, students in any classroom can participate in various satisfying ways. Further, this participation can lead to better understanding and ultimately higher levels of performance in other academic subjects that may demand well-developed abilities with language. Consequently, success in school for many students can be supported and facilitated through an arts program that is infused throughout the curriculum by elementary, secondary, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), and special-education teachers. This paper describes a project at Biloxi High School (Mississippi) in which art and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers cooperated to use the making of handmade paper as a sheltered English project. The key idea behind the Biloxi project was to demonstrate, through the making of handmade paper, how art is created from found materials or from materials available to any culture at a given time or place. The art teachers developed the content objectives that included, for example, exploring nature to learn how found objects and recycled materials could be turned into works of art. Objectives included extending those observations to learn how various cultures, particularly those represented by the students in the class, viewed such objects of art. The job of the ESL teacher was to take the art objectives and craft language objectives that matched and supported them. The authors have found this project to be a springboard for other projects that combine the teaching of the arts and English as a second language. From this experience, students may create culturally specific art forms that enhance their understanding and appreciation of the diversity in American school settings. This article includes a page of detailed instructions for making handmade paper.
Middle school teachers, like all educators around the nation, are encountering classrooms comprised of an unprecedented number of students from various cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Due to the influx of immigrants entering the U.S. educational system, the number of students who speak a native language other than English has grown dramatically and will account for about 40% of the school-age population by 2040. The reality of a multicultural, multilingual student population dictates that educators, 87% of whom are Caucasian, must be prepared to interact and work with students who do not share the same language, culture, or national origin. Some researchers believe that meeting the needs of diverse students is, and will be, even more challenging for middle school teachers than other teachers, because they must also help students deal with the unique developmental changes that occur during this time. As young adolescents confront a host of transitions associated with the emergence of puberty, including dramatic physical, social-emotional, and cognitive changes, they also undergo transformations in relationships with parents, encounter more emotionally intense interactions with peers, and struggle with personal identity issues. Middle school teachers, therefore, must become educated about and skilled in using pedagogy that is sensitive and responsive to the developmental and educational needs of young adolescents from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. This article explores instructional strategies employed by teachers in middle school classrooms in Florida, a state in which 50% of the students in public schools are members of ethnic minority groups. (Contains 1 note.)
A substantial body of theoretical literature testifies to the evolutionary functions of emotions. Relatively little has been written about their developmental functions. This article discusses the developmental functions of emotions from the perspective of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard, 1977, 1991). According to DET, although all the emotions retain their adaptive and motivational functions across the lifespan, different sets of emotions may become relatively more prominent in the different stages of life as they serve stage-related developmental processes. In the first section, we present a brief overview of relevant aspects of the theory. In the second section, we discuss how emotions play a central role in helping the individual achieve developmental milestones and tasks during four major periods of life: Infancy, toddler through preschool years, middle to late childhood, and adolescence. The underlying thesis of this article is that emotions play a central role in stimulating social cognitive attainments at each stage of development.
This chapter discusses emotional competence in two domains (emotion regulation and emotion knowledge) and then considers research findings on whether skills such as children's ability to handle and interpret emotions are causally related to children's academic achievement. Do more emotionally well-regulated preschool and elementary age children have greater opportunities for learning? Conversely, do children who have a more difficult time regulating their anxiety or frustration and who misidentify others' emotions have fewer opportunities to learn? If so, is it due to regulatory and cognitive processes that take place within the child, or to social processes that take place around the child in his or her classroom, or to some combination of both psychobiological and interpersonal processes that make learning more difficult? This chapter explores these questions, examining a number of innovative areas of research in developmental and social psychology and developmental neuroscience that may offer some promising answers. This chapter will also outline ways that prevention and intervention programs targeting children at risk for poor academic, behavioral, and emotional outcomes may provide more conclusive answers to causal questions regarding the links between children's emotional competence and their opportunities to learn. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Proposes a model designed to explain the fundamental link between culture and cognition, using African-Americans as the case in point. It is argued that much of the school failure exhibited by African-American children can be explained in terms of the cultural discontinuity resulting from a mismatch between salient features cultivated in the African-American home and proximal environments and those typically afforded within the US educational system. The empirical investigations emanating from this stance reveal that the task performance of Black children can be greatly enhanced by the incorporation of certain cultural factors into the learning contexts. Increased performance is interpreted as the result of familiarity with the learning context which activates the use of cognitive skills and enhances motivation to perform the given task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[propose] the assumption that the emotions system constitutes the primary motivational system for human behavior, and that each discrete emotion serves unique functions in coping and adaptation / the chief premise [is] that each of the emotions organizes and motivates perception, cognition, and actions (behavior) in particular ways / therefore, individual differences in emotion thresholds lead to individual differences in patterns of behavior that become organized as traits of personality
presents evidence and argument for the unique organizating and motivational functions of discrete emotions [in evolution and development] / discusses a sample of the growing body of research that shows relations between indices of emotion experiences and indices of traits and dimensions of personality / discussion is limited to the emotions of joy, sadness, anger, disgust, shame, and fear / each of these emotions serve at least one distinct function / some emotions serve a common function in different ways (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Early emergent patterns of behavioral problems, social skill deficits, and language delays were examined in 259 3 yr old children enrolled in Head Start classrooms. The Child Behavior Checklist for Children Ages 2–3 (CBCL/2–3) and the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS, Pre-School Version) were completed by the children's primary caregivers. Language skills were assessed using the Preschool Language Scale (PLS)-3 and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)-III. Findings indicated that this population is at elevated risk for behavioral and language problems. Approximately 25% of both boys and girls showed clinical/subclinical levels of internalizing problem behavior on the CBCL. Children with behavioral problems were more likely to have low language scores than were their peers without behavioral problems. Nearly half of the children scored in the category "lower than average" for social skills on the SSRS. Children with low social skills were more likely to have low language scores than were their peers with average social skills. The need to screen for early emergent behavioral problems, the potential contribution of poor language skills to children's problem behavior, and implications for early intervention are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)