The Effects of Drama-supported Cooperative Learning Method on the Development of Pre-school Children's Communication Skills

The aim of the present study is to investigate into the effects of drama-supported cooperative learning on the development of 5- 6-year-old children's communication skills. The study was carried out with a total of 24 students, 12 in the experimental group and 12 in the control group, attending a nursery school in Bursa in the 2011-2012 educational year. In the study, the Communication Skills Questionnaire developed by Görgülü (2009), the Personal Information Form included in the MNE 2006 Regulations and the “Personal Information Form” used by Gömleksiz (1997) before were used as data collection tools. The Personal Information Form and the Communication Skills Scale were filled by the teachers of the students included in the experimental and control groups in the pre-test stage. After the pre-test stage, the students composing the experimental group were applied the drama-supported cooperative method activities and those in the control group were applied the drama activities included in the MNE pre-school program for eight weeks. At the end of this duration, the Communication Skills Questionnaire was filled once again by the classroom teachers by taking the changes in the students into consideration. In the study, as statistical techniques, the independent samples t-test and covariance analysis were employed to the pre-test and post-test scores obtained from the communication skills scale. In the analyses, as the significance level, p<.05 was taken. As a result, in terms of the total scores obtained from the verbal communication skills sub-scale of the communication skills scale, significant differences were found in favor of the experimental group. In terms of the total scores obtained from the non-verbal, avoidance of communication barriers and polite communication skills sub-scales, no significant differences were observed between the experimental and the control groups.