Teacher’s and Students’ Opinions on the Use of Drama Method in Distance Education and Drama Activity Proposals

Abstract

The need for distance education due to the Covid-19 pandemic has led researchers to seek to increase the quality of distance education. It is obvious that the usage levels of different teaching methods in education should be changed. With the use of drama in education, it is aimed that children who participate in the learning process by having fun become self-actualized, creative, honest, open to communication and independent individuals. In this study, it was investigated whether the drama method, which is one of the effective teaching methods, can be applied in distance education, and drama activity proposals were created. In the study, three different drama activities were presented, which were prepared in accordance with the outcomes for the primary school 1st grade Life Science lesson and suitable for distance education, after the teaching with these activities, the opinions of the classroom teacher and students about the process were collected with a semistructured interview form. According to the opinions received, it was concluded that technological problems can be a major obstacle to the application of the drama method in distance education, some students may have motivation problems. Better results can be obtained by increasing the frequency of using the drama method, this method can be used in almost every unit of the Life Science lesson, if the curriculum was revised according to distance education, appropriate drama activities should be included, the drama activities presented in this study were sufficient in terms of unit gains and implementation, and students found the lesson taught with this method enjoyable. The results obtained were evaluated in the light of the literature