The Effect of Drama Course on Prospective Primary and Preschool Teachers' Communication Skills

Abstract

This research aims to determine the effect of the drama course on the communication skills of prospective primary and preschool teachers. In the research, a one group pretest-posttest model was used before the pilot-test. The research population of the study was 140 third-grade prospective teachers who studied at Afyon Kocatepe University Faculty of Education Primary and Preschool Education program and took drama lessons. Since the entire population was available for research, sampling was intentionally omitted. “Communication Skills Scale” developed by Korkut, Owen and Bugay (2014) was used as the data collection tool in the research. In the data analysis, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used in the comparison of the difference between two pairs in dependent groups. In the comparison of binary groups, Mann Whitney U Test was applied. It was concluded that there was a significant difference in favour of the posttest among the pretest and posttest scores obtained from the “Communication Skills Scale” and its sub-dimensions of the prospective Primary and Pre-school teachers who took the drama course in the research and favour of the female prospective teachers among the pretest and total scores. It is also concluded that there is no significant difference between pretest and posttest score differences between Primary and Preschool prospective teachers.