Self-regulation and Creative Drama

The buzz today is on helping children self-regulate their behavior more effectively. Self-regulation involves both cognitive and social-emotional processes that are learned within a social context. Research suggests that self-regulation is one of the primary indicators of school success. In a 2003 article, Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova describe the two processes in this way.

Self-regulation can be thought of as having two parts, both cognitive and social-emotional regulation. In reality, self-regulation is a combination of the two. Cognitive self-regulation is the degree to which children can regulate their own behaviors, are reflective, and can plan and think ahead. They have control of their thinking. They plan, they monitor, they evaluate thinking strategies, and they can attend and remember on purpose. It is not to say that children without self-regulation cannot attend or remember at all-some children can remember remarkable things like the names of all dinosaurs if this is what interests them. But when you're trying to teach these children to remember something, such as their phone number, it seems they can't remember a thing. What children need to learn to do is to "remember on purpose," to remember things they must learn and know, and to remember how to act in a given situation.

Social-emotional self-regulation means being able to inhibit and delay gratification. Being able to do this means being able to control emotions. If someone knocks you down, pushes you, you don't erupt into anger. With social-emotional self-regulation, you know when you're talking too loud, when you're irritating other people, or when you need to stop a behavior. Social-emotional regulation also means being able to internalize standards of behavior and apply these standards without being reminded. Children who have social-emotional regulation internalize the rule about not knocking down others' block constructions and walking around these constructions instead of into them.

Recent research on PLAY emphasizes its unique role in promoting self-regulatory behavior (Play=Learning edited by Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek). Those who work in drama, particularly creative drama with children, see this self-regulatory behavior at work all the time as children strive to connect imagination and action both in themselves and in the collaborative venue of dramatic action. We (Creative Drama and Imagination -- see book collaborations) observe children develop metacognitive skills in:

• compressed rehearsal,
• developing an expressive way to communicate self as image,
• viewing the world as material for dramatic interactions,
• demonstrating "knowing that you know" and the ability to work collaboratively and
• developing their "third eye"- a sense of audience and the ability to simultaneously do and monitor your actions in relation to others.

The cognitive and social emotional development of self-regulation in children is elaborated in the following article Creative drama and young children: The dramatic learning connection.

The man, woman or child in the mirror

In 1982, graduating with a doctorate in Creative Arts Education from Rutgers University, my colleagues and I were looking forward to a new era where brain and body were connected and cognition and emotions were not separate entities. But fast forward to 2009 and educational psychology and child growth and development textbooks continue to discuss cognition without ever mentioning emotions. NCLB has narrowed curriculum and determined the parameters for thinking based on standards tests.

Mirror Neurons, a fairly recent and very exciting discovery within the brain, addresses the ability of the brain to interface cognition and affect in the service of "learning, attention, memory, decision-making, and social functioning". The fascinating work of Antonio Damasio and Mary Helen Immordino Yang offers insight into the workings of these "as if" neurons and their connection to emotional thought. Their theories push the envelope by offering an exciting model of learning where the learners feelings about what they are learning are as relevant as what they are learning.

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~immordin/papers/Immordino-Yang+Damasio_2007_RelevanceofNeurotoEdu.pdf

As teachers of art and artists we know that learning is not divorce from emotions, mind is not separate from body. Why does our society and education see learning as sectioned from feelings. If fact, if student's feeling life is activated, learning is deeper and more impassioned. Discoveries in neuroscience, in particular mirror neurons, can help set the stage for a more balanced curriculum with the arts as equal partners to other disciplines. Arts integration becomes a key venue for generating understanding, analysis, evaluation and creating as defined by 21st Century skills. Research on arts integration (Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond [Ed.}, Putting the arts in the picture: Reframing education in the 21st Century, 2004) continues to support this powerful learning model as a process of bringing together two disciplines to advance knowledge and skills in both and engaging learners in authentic intellectual work. For integration to occur each discipline must be valued equally and studied in a way that invites inquiry, challenges students to address real-world standards of craftsmanship, and work in depth to apply knowledge to new situations or settings (p. 25).

The arts may be the mirror we need to view ourselves as an integrated being with emotional thought who attends to the world more fully, recalls more deeply, and makes socially conscious decisions that improve both ourselves and others.

Welcome

Welcome to Your Brain on Art.

This is a beginning of a conversation…about the Arts and their relationship to and impact on cognition, affect, bodies, teaching, creativity, play and learning…the Brain on Art! The mind and body are not separate entities. They are one and the same – part of our biology – each informing the other to develop one individual.

This conversation is inspired by teachers (at Kathy’s wedding shower!)

• who love children
• who have their best interest at heart
• and who know something is not quite right…

So I am sharing what I am learning about mind-body connection or embodiment and how the arts, play and creativity factor into this notion. I thought you might like to read these two works on play and learning. The Scientific American article reviews some of the latest research on play and Daniel Walsh’s article (pg 97), Frog Boy and the American Monkey: The Body in Japanese Early Schooling, explores movement and play differences between Japanese and American cultures. Both are fascinating and hopefully will give rise to questions and comments.

My goal is to start this blog so we can share these ideas together. As teachers and artists, dancers, actors, musicians and parents, you are such a resource of ideas and caring for the well-being of children. We need to share the wisdom of excellent teachers (Yes, YOU) can help support and direct our actions. I am always so inspired by your conversation, your concerns, your theories and ideas about children as learners. This process will only be hampered by my learning curve around blogging and the issue related to learning something new at 60!! I will keep you all posted. In the meantime, enjoy the articles and go out and play!!