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Description
One of the main concerns of teachers and caregivers of younger children is persistent challenging behaviors, and this is particularly true in early childhood education settings where children are actively developing emotional and behavioral regulation abilities. The program was designed to provide opportunities that foster growth in emotional regulation, peer and adult interaction, anger management, and problem solving. The curriculum goals focused on educating and helping children in after school environments and promoting emotional regulation, adult interaction, anger management, problem solving, and participation. The current teacher-action research aims to partially address this growing challenge through the development, implementation, and process evaluation of a curriculum for children ages four to eight in after school programs informed by art therapy techniques. The program aims to reduce the emergence of challenging behavior using art therapy techniques that have been successfully implemented in other settings. Participants in the program were 10 children ages four to eight who were enrolled in an after school program. The program was composed of eight lesson plans administered over four weeks. Fidelity of administration was monitored using a checklist, and the impact of the program was evaluated through a combination of teacher behavior checklists and teacher reflective journaling. The results overall indicate that the program was successful at reducing behavior problems. Progress in areas related to all of these goals was reflected both through emergent themes identified through qualitative coding of the reflective journals and through quantitative decreases in behavior problems. Children also enjoyed engaging in the art therapy based activities and increased their level of participation in the activities over time. These results suggest that art therapy based curriculum can be used as an intervention method in early childhood programs to promote positive emotion regulation and social skill development. The process evaluation of the current program also suggests that teachers in after school programs may be flexible in the administration of their program activities to adapt to logistical factors such as parents taking their children home at various times of the day.
