Art Therapy in Child Road Safety Education
Nana Kwame Nsiah-Achampong *
Transportation Engineering Division, CSIR – Building and Road Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Background: Child traffic fatality has given rise to concerns from different road safety professionals and bodies seeking to find an antidote to the problem. Low cognitive development is a major factor contributing to child fatalities, among other causes. Child road traffic fatality has been inversely proportional to the intensity of child road traffic education, posing challenges to conventional methods of education.
Aim: The aim of this study is to employ art therapy to assimilate traffic culture into children as a conventional developmental process to enhance cognition for the needed comprehension of the complexity of the traffic environment.
Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out in the St. Peter’s School in Kumasi, Ghana, in a period of one term (approximately four months).
Methodology: Forty children, aged between five and ten, from Ghana were studied. The children were carefully observed in a one-school-term period longitudinal study. The study population went through four therapy sessions, from which they produced a total of 160 drawings, which formed the basis for studying the children’s behaviour in traffic in a pre-survey and post-survey road crossing design. The art therapy involved a storytelling on a case of road traffic crashes, respondents subsequently made drawings out of the stories, and each respondent stood in front of the class and told a story from their drawing.
Results: Performance results of the Test Group and Control Group in a final post survey indicated mean values of 18, 26, 33 and 37 for the Test Group, with corresponding 13, 14, 19 and 15 mean values for the Control Group. Theories of child development, psychology and art education were applied to the children to aid teaching and learning.
Conclusion: Art therapy sessions had a tremendous impact on the Test Group. From the first participation, respondents in the Test Group showed significant performance improvement. The Control Group, which had had the conventional road traffic education, did not improve in performance.
Keywords: Art therapy, children’s behaviour, drawings, teaching and learning method, road traffic education