Cultural and Age Differences of Three Groups of Taiwanese Young Children's Creativity and Drawing

Abstract

This study investigated the cultural and age effects on children's overall creativity and drawing. 1,055 children ages 6 to 8 from three groups--urban and rural Taiwanese children and Taiwanese children of immigrant mothers, all in public schools--were given a creativity test, a people-drawing test, and a free-drawing test. The results showed that the older Taiwanese children scored higher than the young Taiwanese children on people-drawing and free-drawing, but not overall creativity. Drawing and creativity scores increased in accordance with age. In the six-year-old group, a group difference was found only on the scale of people-drawing. Urban Taiwanese children in the eight-year-old group scored higher than the other two groups of children on creativity and free-drawing. Results are discussed in terms of educational opportunities.

Studies of the Factors and How Different Inspirational Teaching Methods can Affect Taiwanese Young Children?s Drawing Content

“…This study used the children's drawing content as the basis for qualitative analysis, along with the statistical software package SPSS12.0 for data statistics analysis, for each of the children's drawings. This is based on a Free-drawing Test and Scoring Scale, and a People-drawing Test and Scoring Scale, which were designed to evaluate children's drawing ability for the present study as well as others [13,14].…”

“…Lowenfeld and Brittain [3] defined children's development of drawing into various stages, which provides a framework for researchers to evaluate children's development of drawing. Wei and Dzeng [4] investigated the cultural and age effects on children's overall creativity and drawing. 1,055 children ages 6 to 8 from three Taiwanese cultural groups participated in this study.…”

“…Many studies indicated that young children who participated in more visual art lessons performed better in drawing [5][6][7][8] Thus, how to increase students' creativity is a major focus and challenge for most governments, such as Taiwan. Many educators call for emphasizing the importance of visual art education.…”

“…However, boys with softer personalities, and those that played with girls more often, showed characteristics in their drawings that were similar to those of the girls' . 4. The drawing capabilities and drawing content of young children could be affected by factors such the children's age, gender, personality, and intellectual advantages.…”

Effect of Cultural Differences in Reaction of Students to Ambiguous Art Stimulus

“…Despite that, and in harmony with the results we arrived at, it can be concluded that creativeness of Chinese students must be provided with maximum support already from their school age. Creativeness of children from Tchai-Wan was studied by Mei-Hue and Dzeng [15]. More than a thousand children were categorised by age and cultural origin (city x village vs. immigrant mother).…”