Date Awarded

1984

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Education

Abstract

For many years, the technique of puppetry has been successfully utilized within child counseling programs (Jenkins and Beckh, 1942) (Grant, 1950) (Koenig, 1951) (Dinkmeyer and Caldwell, 1970). Only recently the use of puppets was popularized by the introduction of the DUSO program (Dinkmeyer 1970, 1973). In fact, puppetry was cited as a potentially invaluable intervention strategy to facilitate affective educational programs to help stimulate young children to explore their feelings. However, little experimental evidence was gleaned from the literature to support the efficacy of the puppetry techniques (Strage, 1979) (Zingle, 1972) (Buffalo Public School System Project, 1975). Only testimonial and anecdotal statements supported the use of puppets as a counseling strategy (Liss, 1950) (Vidler, 1972) (Sang and Wickersham, 1975) (Burn, 1977). Puppets and structured story telling (Bibliotherapy) were described in the literature as a successful joint child therapy approach although without the support of a controlled experiment setting.;Fifty second and third graders, of six Southeastern Virginia public schools, volunteered for divorce adjustment counseling. These groups were led by different counselors at each school. These counseling groups ran for approximately one month with pre and post testing based on a specific experimental design cited in Campbell and Stanley (1963). The E explored the efficacy of specific child counseling techniques, puppetry and bibliotherapy. Standardized measures of attitude and behavior for this select cross section of elementary children were obtained. Frequency charting of affective words were derived from individual responses to a projective technique, sentence completion responses. The hypotheses were statistically analyzed through the employment of ANOVA and T-Test procedures. Covariates were established and analyzed to control for the influence of the dependent variable test results and other potentially significant factors.;An attempt was made, through this research project, to develop quantitative results to measure the changes in the S's attitude, behavior and emotional expression based on their exposure. The results of the post test data proved to be inconclusive. Some changes in the dependent variables were noted, however, these dependent variables did not exhibit the anticipated differences which were hypothesized.;Several extraneous variables influenced the experimental outcome. The most important of these were the observable counselor differences in style and group leadership. Future research should aim at controlling, through standardization, the impact of counselor ability and application of these techniques of puppetry and bibliotherapy.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-jrwt-zq43

Rights

© The Author

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