The purpose of the master's thesis was to determine whether the social cohesion of the class and thus the social relations in the class improve if the teaching approach is used in the lessons, in which the students cooperate a lot with their classmates, compared to normal lessons that do not include the method creative movement. In addition, I was also interested in how students feel during such lessons compared to how they feel during lessons that do not include an active creative movement approach and how also affects the social cohesion of the class.
The theoretical part deals with learning and movement, which are then connected in a creative movement. The creative movement is presented as a way of working in lessons, its definition, characteristics and what it enables us in the school space or lessons. I defined it as an active way of learning, presented the types of movement-dance creativity and defined what influence the way of working with creative movement has on the overall development of students and on their social development. Since the research of the master's thesis is also related to the social development of the child, the theoretical part also presents the social development of children by stages and what is characteristic of a certain stage, what are social skills, I focused on the social skill of cooperation and collaborative learning and social relations in class and what social cohesion is. The theoretical part concludes with definitions and findings from the literature on the connection between the creative movement and social cohesion.
The empirical part includes part of the research scope of the project Intervention program to increase the 24-hour physical activity of elementary school children, which was carried out by the team of the Faculty of Sport of the University of Ljubljana and the Faculty of Education of the University of Ljubljana.
Three fifth-grade classes were included in the research, i.e. a total of seventy-two male and female students. All students participated in all activities that were important for obtaining data and I needed them to form the final conclusion. They participated in co-design activities, two sociometric tests and lessons with creative movement.
The part of the research, which is related to lessons with creative movement and sociometric testing, is presented and analyzed in detail and is connected with obtaining findings important for formulating a conclusion about the change in the social connection of three fifth graders due to the use of creative movement.
The results showed that social cohesion improved in two classes, but extremely little. After that, well-being during lessons with creative movement and more cooperation between students during lessons also had an impact. The fact that there is no big changed in result in the sociometric test, which is the result of the fact that only two lessons with creative movement were conducted in each class.
If I wanted to get more data on the longterm social connection of students in the classroom, I would have to conduct the research over a longer period of time and more lessons should be carried out with this teaching approach.
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