The use of Ububele persona dolls in an emotional literacy programme with pre-school children
Date
2008-11-25T12:17:44Z
Authors
Buchanan, Lee-Anne
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Ububele is a resource and training centre located in the greater Alexandra Township of
Johannesburg. One of Ububele’s projects, the Ububele Persona Doll project, is a
programme that is aimed at developing emotional literacy in pre-school children using a
life-size handmade doll in a group setting. This research has sought to explore the use
of the Ububele Persona Dolls. The sample consisted of eighteen Grade R children at
the Ububele Therapeutic Nursery School and their teacher. They were video recorded
during six regular Ububele Persona Doll sessions.
The use of the dolls in developing emotional literacy in pre-school children, as well as
their potential for use in group therapy was assessed in three different stages. Firstly,
the presence of emotional material in the form of emotional adjectives was assessed.
The teacher’s response patterns and level of empathy, as well as the effectiveness of
the responses in terms of the goals of emotional literacy development were analysed.
Lastly, the transcripts were examined for the presence of material, with regard to
thematic content that could be used in group therapy.
The presence of emotional adjectives suggested that there was useful emotional
material present, although the material was mainly brought up by the teacher and the
range of the material was limited. The teacher’s responses were most frequently
informative, didactive or directive responses and questioning responses. However, she
did make use of paraphrases and restatements, reflections and verbal encouragers to a
lesser degree. With regards to the empathic levels of the responses, most of the
responses involved exact replications of what was said by the child and no empathic
responses requiring an understanding of human behaviour were given. The goals of
emotional literacy training were all being achieved within the sessions. A number of
themes, including physical discipline, abuse and neglect, broken or non-nuclear
families, and death and dying, emerged. These themes could be concentrated on by a
group facilitator.
Description
Keywords
persona dolls, emotional literacy, emotional intelligence, group therapy, pre-school children