Evaluation of Drama in Education (DiE) Studies Conducted in Independent Pre-schools: A Case Study in Aydın-Turkey

Abstract

The present study investigates and evaluates how pre-school teachers take drama as an educational method, what drama activities they use in their classrooms, how they plan these activities in accordance with student needs and purposes, and whether they have efficient knowledge and experience about educational use of drama. Work group of the study consists of three independent pre-schools in the provincial centre of Ayd?n. The schools were selected in accordance with purposive sampling method among low, medium and high level schools in terms of socio-economic status. Sampling way can be defined as “criteria based sample selection” technique. Data of the study were collected with qualitative research techniques; observation, interview and documentary analysis, and method triangulation method was adopted for a detailed data collection. Collected data were evaluated in terms of pre-school teachers’ use of drama as an educational method and their processes of developing drama lesson plans. According to the evaluations, it was observed that pre-school teachers considered drama as an educational method, however they lacked some qualities required for planning and implementing and they had difficulty in developing authentic working areas for children to interact, express themselves, and discover new situations. It was also observed that drama studies were not used as a method, they were not associated with other lessons efficiently and teachers didn’t make evaluations in this context.