The Impact of Puppet Theatre Among Preschoolers Socio-Emotional Abilities Development

Abstract

"In general, undesirable behaviors of people and particularly of children occur due to a lack of socioemotional skills and competences. The training and development of these skills begins in the family environment, the first environment with which the preschooler came into contact. However, preschool is the period of accelerated development on all levels: physical, cognitive and socioemotional. These periods develop the basic skills (cognitive, emotional and social) so necessary for adaptation to adult life. From the moment when children are received in kindergarten, the teacher must model their teaching discourse and behavior, in order to establish a network of appropriate and secure social relationships, in which each participant (child) to feel valued and confident, to express his inner experiences: thoughts, emotions, desires, motivations and so on. The aim of this study was to implement and test the effectiveness of an educational intervention program based on puppet theatre in order to develop emotional abilities (recognition of personal and other people’s emotions) and social abilities (social interaction, problem solving, respect for rules and tolerance). The results showed that puppet theatre contributes statistically significantly to the development of socio-emotional abilities in preschoolers, and after calculating the effect size, a strong effect was demonstrated for emotional expressiveness, regulation of socio-emotional response, empathy, self-image and cooperation, and in terms of social interaction the proposed intervention program had a medium effect."