Promoting social-emotional development through creative drama for students with special needs

Abstract

The authors evaluated two brief small-group creative drama programs for enhancing special-needs students' peer relations. In Study 1, 12 early adolescents participated in a fall group and nine in a winter group within a delayed-treatment design. The fall group did not significantly exceed the winter group on self-report, teacher, and parent measures of social-emotional skill. However, the fall group maintained its progress at followup, the winter group made gains on self-report and parent measures after its program, and 16 of the 21 students in both groups improved. In Study 2, seven latency-aged children participated in a younger group and eight in an older group; nine students served as comparison participants. The 15 treated children significantly exceeded the untreated children on self-report and a more specific teacher measure; 13 of the 15 students improved. These studies demonstrate that small-group creative drama can positively affect peer interaction skills of children and early adolescents.