The Effect Of Drama Education On Prospective Teachers Creativity

A number of studies of the effects of drama on individuals' cognitive and affective characteristics have been carried out recently. These studies revealed that drama had positive impact on students' development of communication skills, socialization levels, development of emotional intelligence, social skills, empathic skills and empathic tendencies regardless of the grade levels of the students. In the present study, the effect of drama education on creativity of prospective classroom teachers was examined. As the method of this study, experimental design, which is based on pre-test and post-test, was used. In the research the study group consisted of 78 the 4th grade students (50 females and 28 males) who attended the Primary School Teacher Education Program at Elementary Education Department of Faculty of Education, Kirikkale University in fall semester of 2006-2007 academic year. The data in this study was gathered through "Torrance Test of Creative Thinking-Figural Form A". "TTCT-Figural, Form A" was applied on the participants before and after Drama Course, and their pre-test and post-test scores were compared accordingly. Results of the study showed that at the end of the Drama Course, the scores of creativity test the students took increased to some extent in all of the dimensions of creativity test, which are "fluency", "originality", "elaboration", "resistance to premature closure" and "abstractness of titles". It was also found out that participants' pre-test and post-test creativity scores did not make a significant difference according to gender variable. Recommendations of the study include that drama should be an essential part of all teacher education programs, and more research should be performed focusing on the effects of drama on students' various intellectual skills and attitudes. [This study was presented in VI. National Primary School Teacher Education Symposium organized by Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Apr 27-29, 2007.] (Contains 8 tables.).