IMPACTS OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE, CREATIVITY AND LEARNING IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
creativity, imagination, art, theater teaching and child development.
The present study is based on cultural psychology and reaffirms the importance of teaching theater in a school environment, articulating creativity and child development, by defending that the theatrical phenomenon, being a collective construction mediated by the teacher, tends to provide both opportunities for the rising of meanings and tension in the process of identity constitution of the subjects involved in a situation of dialogical interaction with the otherness. The goal of this article, therefore, was to analyze how developing creativity through theater favors the learning process of children between 7 and 8 years old and to point out pedagogical strategies to work with students in a classroom. For that, qualitative action research was carried out, based on the cultural psychology’s epistemology, analyzing the relationship between the theoretical approach of creativity proposed by Vlad Glăveanu and the postulates of psychologist L.S. Vygotsky on human development, specifically, the theoretical constructs on the psychology of art and imagination in childhood. The field research took place in an elementary public school in Taguatinga/DF, and it used the following research procedures: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, researcher’s intervention actions through activities and playful-creative-theatrical dynamics, and field diary. During three months, remote and face-to-face weekly meetings were held with the participants, the teachers and 3rd grade students. The meetings recording, both video and audio, were transcribed, separated into episodes, selected and submitted to microgenetic analysis. The results, in addition to contributing to the studies of creativity regarding child development, also point to the need of expanding the space for playful actions in schools. In addition, it allows us to understand the importance of theater learning on school-aged children’s development, as well as to point out some strategies to be applied by the pedagogue with elementary school students (early years).