İlkokul Çevre Konularında Uygulanan Yaratıcı Drama Yönteminin Öğrencilerin Başarılarına, Kalıcılığa Ve İlgilerine Etkisi

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the effects of creative drama method on 3th and 4th grade students’s achievements, learning retention and attitudes towards science and environment in the environment subjects. For this purpose, creative drama lesson plans were designed by the researcher and applied on experiment groups. The plans applied on control groups were designed by the class teachers according to curriculum. The study was carried out in a public primary school found in Ankara in the academic year of 2015-2016. The research was applied on 3th and 4th classes who were studying at eight different classes. Two classes were assingned as experiment groups and other two classes were assingned as control groups. A total of 231 students in the experimental and control groups participated in the study. The design of the study was based on the Solomon Four-Group Model in this study. The researcher was the teacher of the first experiment and control group as a classroom teacher and drama teacher; at the same time, drama teacher was the teacher of the other ones as a classteacher and drama teacher. Thus an appropriate research design has been constructed to investigate whether the effect of the creative drama method on the experimental procedure depends on the teacher impact. As for the control group students, they were taught the lesson in accordance with Science Lesson Curriculum. The implementation was conducted in experimental groups as a total 144 hours during a period of six weeks. The data were collected via the questionnaire of “Environmental Achievment Tests” for both 3th and 4th classes and “Environmental Interest Scale” developed by the researcher and via “Attitudes Towards Science Scale” developed by Geban (1994). Additionaly both experimental and control students were observed during the applications and also 2 weeks after implementation Semi-structured interviews wereiv held with 15 students from the experimental groups at the end of the study. Data from the research were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 statistical package program. The results obtained from the achievement tests demonstrated that a significant difference was found between the corrected posttest achievement scores of the 3th grade experimental and control group students. When the results obtained from the interest scale were examined, a significant difference was found between the pretest and posttest interest scores of the 3th and 4th grade experimental and control group students. When the results obtained from the attitudes test were examined, a significant difference was found between the pretest and posttest attitudes scores of the 3th and 4th grade experimental and control group students. The results obtained from the retention test yielded, a significant difference between the posttest retention scores of the 4th grade experimental and control group students. According to the results of the research, it was found that the teachers were effective in the methods they used, but the meaningful difference in the students' achievement, retention, interest and attitude scores was not due to the influence of the teacher but by the influence of the creative drama method. The present study demonstrated that the use of creative drama as a method in environmental subjects on science lessons could contribute positively to students’ achievement, interest, attitudes towards environment and retention. Additionally qualitative data from the observation and interview results supported these results.