An Investigation of Prospective Social Studies Teachers’ Cognitive Structures Regarding Creative Drama

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.

Exploring High School Students’ Cognitive Structures for Energy Concept Through Word Association Test

“…In the extant literature, various studies were carried out by conducting the word association test (Bahar & Özatlı, 2003;Bahar, Johnstone, & Sutcliffe, 1999;Cardellini & Bahar, 2000;Cachapuz & Maskill, 1987;Çiftçi, 2009;Deveci, Çengelci Köse, & Gürdoğan Bayır, 2014;Ercan, Taşdere, & Ercan, 2010;Gough, 1976;Johnstone & Moynihan, 1985;Kaya & Akış, 2015;Şimşek, 2013;Tokcan & Yiter, 2017;Yel, Çetin, & İnel, 2019). In addition, various studies have been conducted on the concept of energy in the literature (Akbulut, 2008;Aladağ, Tapur, & Duran, 2018;Amador Amador, Carbonero Rosales, & Jarquin Cabrera, 2021;Atılgan, 2000;Ay & Tokcan, 2019;Aydın, 2010;Bilginoğlu, 1991;Çolak, Kaymakçı, & Akpınar, 2015;Çukurçayır & Sağır, 2008;Dikmenli, Öztürk Demirbaş, & Gafa, 2019;Haskök, 2005;Kantemir, 2003;Kar, 2021;Kaygusuz, 1999;Koç & Kaya, 2015;Önder, 2001;Pamir, 2002;Tokcan, 2017;Tokcan & Topkaya, 2018;Uslu, 2004;Yıldırım & Örnek, 2007;Yel & Çetin, 2020). However, there are no similar studies conducted on the concept of energy at high school level.…”

Creative drama English pronunciation program for Bhutanese primary learners

“…Animation -This stage should be planned to meet teacher's objectives and students' characteristics. It embraces the progression of theme or subject through Creative Drama techniques (Ay & Tokcan, 2019). Role playing and improvisation are used as key techniques., either of which can be used one at a time or both as per the planning of the teacher.…”