THE EFFECT OF USING CREATIVE DRAMA METHOD ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN THE SOCIAL STUDIES COURSE: A META-ANALYSIS STUDY

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of creative drama method on the Social Studies course achievement of students. Within the scope of the research, in Google Academic, EBSCOhost, ERIC, ULAKBİM TR Index, thesis databases of the Higher Education Council in Turkey (YÖK), a search was conducted via the key words “drama, creative drama, role-playing, improvisation, Social Studies lesson, and academic achievement”.  As a result of these searches, a total of 19 studies (4 articles and 15 theses) published between the years of 2006 and 2020 were reached. The effect sizes, heterogeneities and publication bias analyzes of the studies were conducted using the “Comprehensive Meta-Analysis” statistical program. It was found that the studies conducted on the creative drama (Q=90,019 p <0,05; I2= 78,893) method showed a heterogeneous distribution, and there was no publication bias. According to the results of the study, the creative drama method had a very large effect size (d = 1,17061) on the success of the social studies course in favour of the experimental groups which utilized the creative drama method. Regarding the effect size results in terms of the years, type and class level of the studies, the effect size of the studies published between 2006-2012  (d=1,208) was higher and was largely positive. Studies published as articles had higher effect size than the theses, and the effect size was perfectly positive. When the effect size of the sample group was examined in terms of the grade levels, it was concluded that the class with the huge effect size was 8th grade (d = 2.733) and the class with the lowest effect size was 4th grade (d = 0.709)