Abstract:

Meta-analysis means an analysis performed to draw a general conclusion by combining the results obtained in different studies. In this study, the effect of creative drama on academic achievement was examined. The aim of the study was determined as to reveal the effect of creative drama activities applied at primary school level on academic achievement. The research sample consists of 26 post-graduate thesis (23 master's degree and 3 doctoral thesis)conducted in Turkey between 2005-2022 in accordance with the inclusion criteria. The post-graduate thesis studies included in the research were accessed from the Higher Education Council Presidency Thesis Center database. During the scanning, the keywords "elementary school", "drama", "creative drama", "experimental", "success" and "elementary school, success, drama" were used. The coding form was used to group the studies to be included in the research and to easily access the desired data. Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software was used in the calculation of publication bias, effect size and heterogeneity tests. According to the results of Begg and Mazumdar rank correlation statistics, in the analyses starting with 26 studies; the fact that the p value (p=0.000) was less than 0.05 indicated publication bias. In this case, the levels of influence of individual studies on the overall effect were re-examined. In order to reduce publication bias, studies that create individual effect size publication bias have been excluded from the analysis. In this case, the analysis was continued with 18 study data. According to the research results, a very large part of the studies included in the analysis were collected in the inner part of the funnel chart and it was found that their contribution to the common effect was high. The research results show that the creative drama method is effective in increasing academic achievement. For this reason, creative drama activities can be given more space in the curriculum in order to increase academic achievement.

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