Abstract:

During their educational practice preschool teachers encounter children, both with and without disabilities, who suppress their emotions, carry certain scars, and sometimes traumas of everyday life that they are not able to express verbally. Art-expressive therapies are one of the ways and means by which a child can express his emotions, thoughts, vision, fantasy, perception, etc. Thus, it contributes to reducing anxiety and generally having a more comfortable stay in a preschool institution. Such a spontaneous, creative and syncretic expression involving different art media (music, art, dance, drama, poetry) with the possibility of reflecting the child's inner world and experience, also provides many other benefits and contributes to child’s well-being and development.

The aim of the study was to examine preschool teacher’s familiarity with the concept of art-expressive therapies and their awareness of therapeutic and transformative strength of different art’s media for child’s development. The online questionnaire with two subscales formed for the purpose of this research was conducted by preschool teachers from Zagreb, Croatia. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in data processing.

The results obtained indicate that most of respondents are familiar with the concept and benefits of art-expressive therapies in individual child’s development and they expressed their interest in further enhancing of their competences in this area as well. It was also established that there is no significant correlation between the respondent’s age and work experience with these variables.

The results of the conducted research indicate the need for further enrichment of preschool educational programs. It could be achieved applying art-expressive therapies as an integrative, syncretic and multimodal form of communication and creative expression for continuous improvement of contemporary educational practice.

Keywords:

Art-expressive therapies, child development, preschool educational institution, preschool teachers, well-being