THE JOURNEY HOME: ODYSSEY-BASED THEATRICAL PLAY AND REPRESENTATIONS OF HOME, RELATIONSHIPS, AND BELONGING IN A MULTIPLE-CASE PILOT STUDY

Forfattere

  • Eleni Konstandinidou PhD Candidate, Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece
  • Panagoula Papadimitropoulou PhD in Science of Education, Teaching Developmental Psychology, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Patras, Greece
  • Artemis Giotsa Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece
  • Eleni Andreou Professor of Educational Psychology, Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejse.v12i7.7005

Nøgleord:

theatrical play, educational drama, Odyssey, home, belonging, children’s drawings, mild cognitive difficulties, embodied learning, multiple-case study, child voice

Resumé

Home is both a material place and a relational setting shaped by memory, emotion, everyday activity, and belonging. This exploratory qualitative multiple-case study examined how 15 participants aged 6–14 years, described for the purposes of the study as having mild cognitive difficulties, represented home before and after an eight-week Odyssey-based theatrical-play programme. Participants were organised into three age groups (6–8, 9–11, and 12–14 years; n = 5 per group). Before the programme, each participant drew a house, a tree, and a person and responded to four open-ended questions after each drawing. The tree and person materials were used only as contextual elicitation. After 16 theatrical-play sessions, the house task and the same four questions were repeated. Analysis treated drawings and verbal accounts as related but distinct sources of evidence and focused on observable elaboration, human presence, relationships, emotional meaning, narrative organisation, and visual–verbal convergence. Simple counts and percentages were used only for clearly identifiable verbal patterns. Explicit named family or interpersonal relationships in the house account were present in 7 of 15 baseline cases (46.7%) and in 10 of 15 post-intervention cases (66.7%). Six post-intervention accounts (40.0%) spontaneously incorporated named Odyssey-related characters or places despite the neutral post-test instruction. Case material also showed that change was heterogeneous: some representations became more environmentally or socially situated, whereas others showed stronger narrative organisation or closer visual–verbal integration. Findings are interpreted as preliminary representational patterns, not as evidence of treatment efficacy.

Forfatterbiografier

  • Eleni Konstandinidou, PhD Candidate, Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

    Eleni Konstandinidou is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Ioannina, Greece, and a Special Education Teacher. Her research interests include special education, psychomotor development, pre-literacy skills, children’s drawing, embodied learning, and educational interventions.

  • Panagoula Papadimitropoulou, PhD in Science of Education, Teaching Developmental Psychology, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Patras, Greece

    Panagoula Papadimitropoulou, PhD in Science of Education, is a psychologist and educator and teaches Developmental Psychology at the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE), Patra, Greece. Her research interests include developmental and educational psychology, psychomotor education, early childhood education, inclusion, counseling, and socio-emotional development.

  • Artemis Giotsa, Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

    Artemis Giotsa (PhD) is Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Ioannina, Greece. Her research focuses on family relationships and representations, interpersonal acceptance and rejection, systems theory, group dynamics, parent and teacher counseling, cross-cultural research, and the development and adaptation of psychometric tools.

  • Eleni Andreou, Professor of Educational Psychology, Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece

    Eleni Andreou (PhD) is Professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Greece. Her research interests include learning difficulties, behavioral problems in schools, social and emotional development, school and cyberbullying, classroom management, school-based intervention programs, mental health promotion, and inclusive education.

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2026-09-11

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Årg. 12 Nr. 7 (2026)

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