Kreatiwiteit en emosionele intelligensie as aspekte van psigologiese weerbaarheid by kinders

Abstract

South African children are exposed to an enormous amount of risk factors to their development and adjustment. Research reveals that, in all probability, they do not have sufficient protective factors at their disposal to cope with such stressors. The resilience (in other words the exposure to risk factors and the presence of protective factors) of a group of children, Grade R to Grade 2, in the Klerksdorp area, was analysed by means of focus groups and questionnaires. The focus groups were conducted with 14 teachers and the questionnaires were completed by 30 parents. The study reveals that the children in this group do not exhibit adequate resilience. The results identified themes such as self-esteem, creativity, assertiveness, emotional expression, emotional regulation, impulsivity, self-motivation, social responsibility and empathy. A programme (based on the Alvord-Baker model of social skills), focusing these themes, was developed in order to facilitate resilience. The Alvord-Baker model of social skills focuses on a pro-active orientation. The Resilience programme consists of eight sessions of one-hour duration. During the sessions, music, dance and art activities are presented by way of groups. The themes of the sessions were intrapersonal factors (for example self-esteem and assertiveness), interpersonal factors (for example empathy and social responsibility), stress management (for example emotional expression and emotional regulation, as ix well as impulse control), general mood (for example self-motivation) and problem solving (for example creativity and emotional creativity). To determine the effectiveness of the compound programme, quantitative dominated, mixed methods were used. This means that, even though a quantitative research design was used (namely a two group, pre-test, post-test design), a qualitative procedure (namely a focus group and interviews), was used in addition. The selected group consisted of 22 children (Grade R=7, Grade 1=7, Grade 2=8), of whom 11 were male and 11 female. The participants were selected systematically from two schools (School1=12, School 2=10). The experimental (n=10) and control (n=12) groups underwent pre- and post-testing (30 days after completion of the intervention). The Resilience programme was only presented to the experimental group. The battery of tests that was compiled to evaluate the effectiveness of the Resilience programme consisted of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1974) and the Behaviours and Emotional Rating Scale-BERS (Epstein & Sharma, 19980. In addition, focus groups with the teachers involved were used, as well as interviews with the parents of the children from the experimental group. The experimental group showed improvement in certain aspects of resilience, for example intrapersonal strengths, interpersonal strengths, affective strengths, school functioning, family involvement, verbal fluency, flexibility and originality, as well as figurative fluency, flexibility and originality. The differences between the experimental and control groups were smaller than expected. It can be stated, however, that the Resilience programme was effective in facilitating resilience in the group of children. A limitation of the study was that the practical significance was small and only statistically significant in a few cases. The parents and teachers could have been involved more actively in the process. Furthermore, it seems as if that future x resilience programmes should be of longer duration in order for participants to have more opportunity to internalise and generalise the acquired skills. It is recommended that resilience programmes should form part of the school curriculum in learning areas such as Life orientation.