Abstract
The aim of this research is to reveal the prospective social studies teachers’ cognitive structures regarding creative drama through the Word Association Test (WAT). The study group of the research consists of 85 prospective social studies teachers, as the final year undergraduate students attending the course of drama at Faculty of Education in Nigde Ömer Halisdemir University, in the spring term of the academic year 2015-2016. In the research, as data collection tool, Word Association Test was used. To the prospective teachers, WAT was implemented as pretest before the course of drama and as posttest after a 14-week-drama course. According to the findings obtained, the word which the prospective social studies teachers associated with the key concept creative drama at most was play in the pretest; however, it was improvisation in the posttest. Moreover, it is seen that the prospective teachers have associated the key concept creative drama with more words in the posttest, when compared to the case in the pretest, and some certain concepts incorrect in the pretest have been eliminated in the posttest. This situation shows that the prospective teachers have had a conceptual development regarding creative drama at the end of drama course; additionally, new and correct concepts have been acquired instead of the incorrect ones. Also, it can be stated that word association test is an effective technique in detecting misconceptions and prospective teachers’ conceptual development.
Highlights
Human uses different ways to express feelings and thoughts
The point below a certain number of word given in response at most for the key concept creative drama included in the word association test was regarded as the breakpoint
The results obtained in the research which was carried out with the aim of determining the prospective social studies teachers’ cognitive structures regarding creative drama by means of Word Association Test (WAT) are as follows: When the breakpoint was specified as 60 and over, the prospective teachers did not associate the key concept creative drama with any words in the pretest; it was associated with improvisation in the posttest
Summary
Human uses different ways to express feelings and thoughts. This can be sometimes a picture, poem, song, story, letter or enacting a slice of life. As for role playing, it is to act out the personality traits and feelings of the characters in the play (Ömeroğlu, 2006) In addition to these techniques, in creative drama, some certain methods and/or techniques such as “role reversal, simultaneous improvisation, teacher in role, dramatization, flashback, interview-conversation-questioning-dialoging, hot seating, conscience alley, freeze frames, gossip chorus/circle, writing in role, inner voice, arranging meeting, pantomime, role cards, personal props -incomplete objects, rituals, ceremonies, cross-cutting ( called split-screen), group sculpting – creating scene in tableau, role alley”, and so on, are included By creating a frequency table which shows how many times the words given in response to the key concept are repeated, conceptual networks can be diagrammed, too (Bahar, Nartgün, Durmuş, & Bıçak, 2010) In this way, by means of WAT, it is possible to find out the misconceptions, as well as seeing conceptual development (Ercan, Taşdere, & Ercan, 2010). The aim of this research is to reveal the prospective social studies teachers’ cognitive structures regarding creative drama by means of WAT
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