competence can be broadly understood. We assume that an important prin-ciple that a teacher should follow when working with students at the level of early childhood education in the Polish language is the following: “One understands what one feels.” We devoted our research to the changes in the area of communicative competences experienced by students in connection with their participation in drama classes, both in their own opinion and in the opinion of the surveyed teachers.
By cognitive development, we understand the development of skills in the perception, memorization and processing of stimuli reaching an individual from the outside world. The concept of cognitive development is inseparably connected with cognitive processes, which include receiving impressions, perception, thinking and memory. Receiving sensations and perception en-able one to learn certain information about the world and other individuals.
Thinking is a higher form, while memory processes are designed to store and recall previously obtained information.
From the moment of birth until the second year of life, a child goes through a sensorimotor period, which is characterized by the fact that the child interacts with the environment with the help of the senses. This is why children love to take everything into their mouths and try everything. That is how they learn about objects and their properties.
From the second year of life, children begin to associate the subject with its name. They enter the period of preoperational development. As the child has not yet fully developed her/his speech skills, she or he thinks through action.
As toddlers, children make decisions based on their own perception of the world, develop perceptions and spatial imaginations that are self-centered. This property disappears in the fifth year of life, when children begin to realize that their ideas do not necessarily reflect reality, and that their beliefs may differ from the beliefs of other people.
In early childhood, toddlers acquire “the ability to recall absent things and phenomena by means of symbols and signs that Piaget called a symbolic function” (Strelau, 2007, p. 300). At the end of this period, they begin to notice the differences between objects; they can also group them on the basis of their similarity.
In the pre-school period, children develop recent memory and long-term memory. Egocentric thinking turns into intuitive thinking. During this period,
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“the development of children’s theories of the mind” also takes place (Kielar-Turska, 2000, p. 104).
From the age of seven, children enter the concrete operational stage.4 When making decisions, not only do they follow their perception of the world, but they also try to verify the correctness of their own observations. This leads to the formation of logical memory, which, in turn, facilitates learning. From the perspective of schooling, the key function is also auditory and visual sensitivity, conducive to the acquisition of reading and writing skills.
According to J. Piaget, cognitive development ends in adolescence, and therefore, at around 11–12 years of age. Young people then enter the formal operational stage which Piaget describes in the following way:
[…] in the period of 11–12 years there is […] in the child’s thinking a fun-damental change, which is the culmination of the operations constructed during the second childhood: the transition from concrete thinking to
“formal” thinking, or “hypothetical-deductive” thinking. (Piaget, 2006, p. 60) To sum up, it is worth noting that in the didactic and educational process, one way to stimulate the senses which are the basis of cognitive development is the use of the drama method. This method helps to develop memory, im-agination, thought and speech.
By social development, we understand changes in a person that contribute to the fact that she or he consciously participates in life and social activi-ties. As A. Matczak emphasizes, “the beginnings of social development are marked by the time the child begins to distinguish people from things and behave differently to them” (Matczak, 2003, p. 155). Social development contributes to the socialization of individuals and the changes related to their relationship with the environment, as well as their knowledge about themselves. Social development is also associated with emotional develop-ment and moral developdevelop-ment.
Infants are already learning to recognize voices, make eye contact and smile.
They also begin to establish emotional ties with a guardian who “becomes a safe base” enabling the child to explore the immediate environment, including his/her own body, and to gradually become independent (Czub, 2015, p. 49).
4 In the phase of operations, “they are able to assemble, reverse, and combine the same elements within a given whole, and express the same material from different points of view” (Przetacz-nikowa & Makiełło-Jarża, 1980, p. 137).
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In toddlers, signs of positive social feelings are visible. Although children are not yet able to organize their own fun, they are happy to be in the company of other children.Another opportunity to make new friends appears when a child goes to kindergarten. It helps to build relationships full of harmonious coexistence and cooperation. It should be emphasized, however, that these relations are not yet permanent and are based primarily on fun. “Particularly important are role games that allow one to discover rules related to a given role. Thanks to this, a child can learn the essence of a given role” (Harwas-Napierała & Trempała, 2000, p. 113).
It is possible to talk about the formation of friendships in the case of slightly older children from around the age of seven. The foundation of friendship is mutual trust, help and respect.
“By entering school, a child reaches a certain level of social and emotional maturity, allowing him/her to adapt to the school situation” (Przetacznikowa
& Makiełło-Jarża, 1980, p. 137). At school, children become part of a formal group (school class). Their contacts depend on acquired communication skills.
Peers continue to play a key role for adolescents. “Membership in a group of peers, friendships and intimate relationships give one a chance to get to know better the behaviors and expectations of others […]. Besides, they are an opportunity to improve the ability to adapt to another person’s otherness”
(Bardziejewska, 2015, p. 359).
Referring to the key competences in the lifelong learning process published in the Official Journal of the European Union, it should be noted that “personal, social and learning skills competences” are understood as “the ability to reflect upon oneself, effectively manage time and information, work with others in a constructive way, remain resilient and manage one’s own learning and career”
(Załącznik. Kompetencje kluczowe… [Appendix. Key competences…], 2018, p. 10).
This requires the ability to effectively communicate in different environments, as well as cooperation, assertiveness, empathy, tolerance and looking at a given prob-lem from different perspectives, abilities that can be taught by the drama method.
Drama, in fact, allows students to put themselves in the situation of someone else, and thus allows for a better understanding of someone’s attitudes and behavior.
Drama and Its Multi-Faceted Dimension
Teaching by experience is an essential element of the drama method. Drama is a didactic and educational method with a multifaceted dimension; it is a way
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of learning through experience and acting based on a fictional situation. This method contributes to the development of imagination, it shapes empathic, verbal and non-verbal communication skills and cooperation. What is more, the techniques of improvisation and “entering the role” used during drama classes make it easier to build a model of life and interpersonal relations.
The precursor of the drama method was B. Way, the author of the most famous work on this method, i.e., Development Through Drama. The most fa-mous theoreticians and practitioners of drama in Europe were G. Bolton, L. Chancerel, H. Caldwell Cook, C. Desinan, D. Heathcote and P. Slade.
Drama appeared in Poland over three decades ago. On the 12–15th of April 1985, five English experts in drama, also actors and educators, visited the War-saw Ochota Theater. The visitors from the Greenwich Young People’s Theater Company conducted drama workshops. The addressees of these classes were teachers, theater instructors and actors. During the workshops, the Britons focused primarily on social drama, which was intended to prepare young people for social roles.
First, drama was mainly used by teachers of early childhood education. There it took the form of quasi-games. In older classes, drama primarily served as a friendly and attractive interpretation of literary works for students.
In the early 1990s, drama began to enter schools at various levels of educa-tion, care and education centers, as well as cultural centers. At the end of the century, it was introduced to the core curriculum in all types of schools as one of the methods for activating students in the didactic and educational process.
In the field of working with children in Polish language education, various drama techniques are used, such as: building individual and group monuments, creating sculptures and vivid pictures, pantomime etudes, “entering the role,”
mini-stories, improvised scenes or stagings, drawings and stop-frames, along with the strategy of “five levels of consciousness,” and others.
Methodological Assumptions of Own Research
The main goal of the research was to determine the influence of drama on the communicative competence of students of early childhood education in the Pol-ish language. The main research goal was to try to answer the following question:
What types of changes in the field of communication skills occur among students of early school education in connection with their participation in drama classes, both in the opinion of the students themselves, as well as the teachers surveyed?
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