The purpose of this study was to determine how art therapy affected self-efficacy among
elementary school children. For this purpose, a test for self-efficacy was conducted with
222 fourth-graders from S Elementary School in Jeju, obtaining an average of 73.4 points.
On this ground, among the children who got mark under average point, they who hoped to
participate in this study and submitted their parents' consent were randomly assigned to the
experimental and control groups, six children for each group, in consideration of gender. The
program was implemented in an art room of the school after school over a total of 20
sessions, two sessions a week, 90 minutes per session, from September 12 to December 2, 2004.
This study used the General Self-Efficacy Scale developed by Cha Jung Eun(1997) on the
basis of Bandura's(1977) efficacy theory and then revised and complemented by Kim Su
Jin(2002) with expressions suitable for elementary school children.
From the results of this study, the following conclusions were drawn.
First, elementary school children improved positively in self-efficacy as a result of the
follow-up test. However, there was no statistically significant result in the area of
preference for task difficulty as a sub-area. Among many other factors, it seems that there
were few positive effects due to the short session.
Second, there were positive changes in self-efficacy by sessions.
Third, there were positive changes in children's psychological state for K-HTP and KSD
from the pretest to the post-test.
Fourth, as for teachers' reports, some reported that children with no will to learn in the
pretest showed a better ability to learn in the post-test while others reported that those
who were passive in the pretest enjoyed presentation and took interest in learning activities.
From these results, Korean painting materials aroused children's interest, activated
interaction and cohesion within a group, and ultimately made contributions to better
achievement and self-confidence in the process of expressing their own psychology properly
through many techniques that they understood for themselves.
Key Words : Group art therapy, Korean painting materials, Self-efficacy