Painting Training on Reducing Aggression and Increasing Creativity in Preschool Pupils

One of the most important and effective life–spans that significantly influence the development of personality and social skills is childhood.  Creativity plays an essential role in them. The prevalence of aggression is high in preschool children. Besides, aggression and decreased creativity adversely impact the subsequent growth stages, leading to delinquency, substance abuse, low self–esteem, diminished emotional well–being, defective new friendship relationships, depression, academic success, and academic achievement. The present research aimed to determine the effects of painting training on reducing aggression and increasing creativity in preschool students in Hamedan City, Iran.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of this study consisted of all pre–school students in Hamedan City, Iran, in the 2015–2016 academic year (N=14366). In total, 30 preschool girls (15) and boy (15) students were selected by a multistage sampling technique and randomly assigned to two groups of control and test. The experimental group was trained for painting instruction for 10 sessions, and the control group received no training. The data collection tool was a 43–item questionnaire about preschool children’s aggression (Vahedi et al., 2008) and Torrance Creative Thinking Scale (1966). To analyze the obtained data, mean (SD) and Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) were used in SPSS.

To investigate the research results, the collected data analyzed at the level of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The achieved data suggested the below statistics: the pretest mean (SD) scores of the aggression scores in the experimental group (X=100.66, S2=11.48); the pretest mean(SD) aggression scores in the control group (X=101.2, S2=10.46); the pretest mean(SD) creativity scores in the experimental group (X=29.60, S2=6.40); the pretest mean(SD) creativity scores in the control group (X=28.13, S2=6.95); the posttest mean(SD) aggression scores in the experimental group (X=97.60, S2=11.64) the posttest mean(SD) aggression scores in the control group (X= 101.21, S2= 10.11), the mean and standard deviation of the posttest creativity scores in the experimental group (X=33.02, S2=6.20) ), and the posttest mean(SD) creativity scores in the control group (X=28.06, S2=7.33) Furthermore, painting significantly decreased aggression values in preschool children. Besides, this educational approach has led to a 54% improvement in aggression scores in preschool children (F=30.98, p<0.001, Eta=0.54). Additionally, painting training significantly increased preschool children; this educational approach has contributed to 54% improvement in the creativity of preschool children (F=19.55, p<0.001, Eta=0.43) 

Painting training by expressing unpleasant thoughts and feelings and enhancing flexural and fluidity skills have reduced aggression and improved creativity in the studied preschool children. Accordingly, it can be used as an effective teaching method for preschool children. Thus, it is recommended to exercise suitable practices with painting training to increase creativity and decrease aggression in preschool children.