Creative education for development of children and youth reading attitudes

Abstract

Keywords: Creative education, drama method, reading attitudes, books.

Main part

Introduction. Creative education primarily involves the development of creative attitudes in children and adolescents, and one of its goals is to develop creative problem solving skills. The achievement of this vision is possible by using the potential of contemporary books as a tool for working with children and young people [10]. Planning classes with a book should be a main area for the teacher's reflection on the issue of triggering emotions and experiences among the youngest children. The literature emphasizes the importance of a sufficiently strong stimulus for neurons in the context of the process effectiveness on gaining knowledge and shaping skills and attitudes of children [8]. The increase of interest in reading among children and adolescents can be realized based on the use of unconventional teaching methods by the educator. Creative education for the development of reading attitudes of children and adolescents is important at an early level of education due to the fact, that development of reading culture is a long-lasting process. This process is beginning with to awake interest of books among children [22].

Parents have a direct impact on the development of children's reading interests. Reading patterns taken from the family home trigger the child's further book-related activities. Reading to children and with children affects the development of their vocabulary, imagination and gives the opportunity to learn empathy and understanding [22]. According to Malgorzata Iwanowicz, the home environment may partly influence pupils' aversion to reading [5]. The reading activity of children and young people is strongly related to the cultural wealth of the family, and more specifically to the level of parents' or guardians' education and the size of the book collections owned by the family. Iwanowicz's research indicates that many homes do not have more than 30 books, and most of them are located in children's rooms. This means, that parents do not acquire books or read them on a daily basis. In addition, research results of the National Library in Poland published in 2018, showed that at least one book was read by 37% of people. In the years 2000-2018 there was a clear decline in readers who reached at least one book, and at least 7 books during the year from 24% to 9%. Furthermore, among the surveyed young people (age 15-24), only 27% of men like reading books, while in girls this rate is higher, 48%. The decreasing interest in reading is influenced by many factors, eg. including lifestyle, leisure time activities, development of digital entertainment and parents' reading habits (or lack of there) [7].

The development of reading attitudes among children and young people also depends on the actions taken by teachers in the educational process. Nowadays, an important role is attributed to activating methods (also called search or problem-based methods) that emphasize the importance of the pupil's active role in the didactic and educational process. The research conducted by Urszula Ordon indicates that among teachers of kindergartens and primary schools [grades I-III], 84.7% of them use this type of method in work, with teaching games (75.2%), integration methods and techniques being the most common (69, 7%), brainstorming (50.5%) and drama (53.8%) [11].

The main material of the study. The crisis of reading, which is emphasized in the above-mentioned studies, implies essence of searching teachers for attractive methods of working with book. An important consideration is how to awaken pupils' interest in literature, which plays an important role in the life of a young person. Literature introduces both the world of entertainment and knowledge. For a book become a kind of life signpost for a young person, it is the right choice. According to some researchers, the basic issue in choosing a book should be the number of activities it triggers, i.e. «sensorimotor, emotional, verbal, intellectual, reception» [10]. Actions taken by the teacher can make pupils interested in literature by engaging them in creative activities. Pupils will become «discoverers of intertextual clues, seekers of literary clues and sometimes detectives» [18]. The creative activity of children and young people is conditioned by specificity of their functioning. Children which want to take up creative activities that requires them to use words, sounds, colors, shapes, gestures [6].

Therefore, the task of adults (parents and teachers) as agent between the book and children and young people include choosing a text that will be tailored to their preferences, interests and needs. In the literature, it is assumed that «motivation to read will appear only when the literary work is adapted to the intellectual and emotional development of a specific recipient» [16]. Particularly important in this context seem to be the abilities possessed by the teacher, conditioning his unconventional actions. These include the creativity of educators, which according to Ken Robinson «is now as important in education as learning to write and read» [17]. During the lessons with a book, they should remember about the values of cultivation critical - creative thinking among pupils. For this purpose, the creative teacher will use open and problem questions that will stimulate pupils' cognitive curiosity during the analysis of a given text and contribute to forming opinions on the behavior of the characters. Open-ended questions can also cause a discussion among pupils about moral problems in a given book. An important role is played by leaving pupils a place for personal reflections through an appropriate way of communication [21].

The teacher should stand out not only by knowledge of various literary texts, but also have abilities related to knowledge of the basics of psychology and knowledge of effective ways of working with children and y oung people. Choosing the right teaching method is always depend on the age of the pupils, didactic goals set by the teacher and the specificity of the subject. One of the most common methods and forms of work with a book are constructing the children's own ending of the story, reading a fragment of the book aloud by the teacher, drawing for a given part of the book, reading competitions and staging [2]. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to present ways of using drama method in the process of development in reading attitudes among children and youth, as one of creative education method, which creates opportunities to acquire knowledge and solve problems creatively by children.

One of the activating methods used by teachers is drama method, which allows to make attempts to incarnate and find pupils in previously unknown roles and many problem situations, which allows them to deepen the knowledge gained about the surrounding world, to identify themselves and others [12]. Drama as a pedagogical method serves not only to interpret specific problem situations, but also literary texts. In addition, this method can be a good school tool to teach children negotiation and decision making. Pupils have the opportunity to fully engage in the educational process, with use their imagination, emotion, senses and intuition to increase knowledge about themselves and others. The drama is addressed to a wide range of teachers, educators, librarians and instructors conducting theatre classes with children and youth [13].

Eugeniusz Szymik emphasizes that use of drama as a teaching method causes increased activation in children, in reference to which they can assimilate and deepen material in the field of language content and forms [19]. The most important in the drama seems concepts related to improvisation and the constant process of creation, in which pupils are not given a ready solution script. Drama techniques are especially useful. They allow children to build a character and related dramatic situations. They provide pupils with the opportunity to play the role and also allow teachers to observe their behavior and reactions. At a later stage, these techniques are helpful in characterizing roles of other people and literary characters and, establishing their internal emotions, experiences, feelings.

During the book classes, conducted according to the assumptions of the drama method, pupils try to visualize a specific story - imagining that they are part of it. One can then observe their increased mobilization to develop questions and formulate hypotheses [4]. Children, entering the role of a specific literary hero, learns his advantages and disadvantages, but must also face his emotions, which requires him to develop empathy. As a result, he gains an increased awareness of making his own decisions and thinking and acting. «Playing the role» by the pupil results in the fact that he changes the way of thinking, taking a different perspective than his own, which later contributes to a better understanding of the readings [19]. Drama also has a therapeutic function, for example shy pupils «playing» forget they are in class. They are more likely to join in a conversation or discussion, thereby raising their own sense of value and self-confidence [19].

Currently, many Polish schools have theater classes, which are increasingly popular among children and young people. For many of them it is also an interesting and unconventional reading experience. People who conduct such classes use drama techniques many times in their work. M. Gudro-Homicka also gives other drama techniques used in Polish schools, like: pose, expert's coat, drawing, drama from a picture, role on paper [3] and the effects of these activities brings long-term benefits. These activities mobilize and activate pupils to take imitative. After reading inspirational books, many of them have ideas to realize their own theatre performances based on various literary works. This proves that pupils have to opportunity to develop creatively from an early age, gaining some knowledge and thoughts that may be useful to them in their teenage and later adult life. The use of drama in classes with children and youth means that pupils are more eager to reach for beautiful literature with view to storing a given poem, story, novel or drama on stage. Reading has become a social phenomenon irrespective of type creation. Drama techniques means that role-playing is profound thought process. Therefore, it is easier for the pupil to understand the situation in which the literary hero finds himself. To make an independent assessment of his behavior, he creates his own creation [1].

In Poland the libraries also use of creative education. They appreciate the value of drama and theatre culture, which are becoming a part of their educational and cultural activities. The libraries organize various theatre and para-theatrical forms to encourage to read younger and older people [9]. What is more, theatre classes can take place in the libraries during the implementation of assigned tasks. Then, an accidental viewer can be a reader who did not come to the library to watch a theatrical performance. It is an accidental meeting and unintentional contact with the library theatre can provoke unconventional interactions and even result in personal participation in theatre classes, and most importantly - work with the text, and thus with the book on which the performance was based [15]. This is a step towards the memory restoration of the books' educational value. Everyone, who learns how to skillfully use the value of a book will gradually achieve reading maturity. This situation will allow children or youth to experience pleasure in contact with literature and give the possibility to independence in interpreting literary texts. Moreover, the sensible readers try to find the sense of reading because of their emotional commitment. During these emotional stories on the characters examples, they can learn to take knowledge from other perspectives, not be concentrated only to their own [14].

Conclusions and prospects for further research. An analysis of reading interests of children and youth presents the deepening reading crisis. Formerly the pupils used to read more books. Nowadays, books have replaced by new technology and other digitally entertainments. In this case, parents and teachers should think about new ways to develop children and youth reading attitudes. One of effective solution can be creative education. The teachers should get to know about different types of teaching method and should use of them during working with the book. Their knowledge about this can be useful in order to encourage pupils to reading books. In addition, appropriately organized cooperation between the school and family brings visible benefits. It enables an agreeing on the best ways of development reading attitudes [20]. Therefore, the phenomenon of creative education in the field of reading is the foundation for achieving completely new research perspectives in psychological, therapeutic, linguistic, literary and didactic aspects.

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