Abstract:

Since having a potential to give students an opportunity to be actively involve in the science learning and leads students to look the scientific phenomena in different perspectives, this study was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of creative drama based science instruction on 6th grade students understanding of the Earth, Moon, and Sun concepts and eliminating the misconceptions on these concepts. In addition, the effectiveness of creative drama based instruction was also examined with regard to students’ cognitive dimensions such as knowing, applying, and reasoning on the Earth, Moon, and Sun concepts. After the four weeks treatment, the Earth, Moon, and Sun Concept Test (EMSCT) that included items categorised as knowing, applying, and reasoning items and covered some of the misconceptions on the related concepts was applied to 82 students in both control (42 students) and the experimental (40 students) groups from four different 6th grade classes. Since there were more than one dependent variable and to control the type-one error, MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) was used. The results revealed that students who were taught by creative drama based instruction showed significantly higher performance than the students who were taught by traditional instruction with respect to acquisition of the scientific concepts on the Earth, Moon, and Sun and elimination of the misconceptions related to these concepts. However, significant differences were not established with respect to all cognitive dimensions labeled as knowing, applying, and reasoning.

Keywords: