Effects of creative drama based life skills training on the life skills level of 5-6 years old children

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the creative drama based life skills training on the life skills levels of 5-6-year-old preschool children. In this study, quasi-experimental research design with pretest-posttest and follow-up test control group was adopted. The study group of the research consisted of children aged between 60-72 months (5-6 years old) in the kindergarten of a private school affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Alanya district of Antalya province. Two groups were formed; an experimental group and a control group. “Early Childhood Life Skills Scale” was administered to the children both in the experimental group and in the control group before the implementation. After the pre-test, the "Creative Drama Based Life Skills Curriculum" designed by the researcher was used in the experimental group for 12 weeks, 2 sessions a week and a total of 24 sessions. The children in the control group, on the other hand, continued their regular training program with their teachers. Following the end of the implementation, the same scale reapplied to the children in the experimental and control groups. The scale was reapplied to the children in the experimental group in order to monitor the permanence of the curriculum, 3 weeks after the end of the implementation. The data were analyzed via the SPSS program after obtaining all the data. The normality of the data was determined by the kurtosis-skewness analysis. After reaching the information that the data were normally distributed, the analyzes were completed by using the t-Test for dependent groups and t-Test for independent groups from parametric tests. According to the findings obtained from the study, no statistically significant difference was found between the life skills levels of the experimental and control groups in the "Early Childhood Life Skills Scale" pre-test results. When the post-Test results applied to both groups at the end of a 12-week study period with the children in the experimental group were examined, a statistically significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group. According to the results of the follow-up test applied to the experimental group 3 weeks after the end of the implementation, no significant difference was observed in the life skills levels of the children and it was concluded that the effects of the curriculum were permanent.