A method for developing social information processing and creative thinking in inclusive pre-school classrooms drama

ABSTRACT

Children’s creative thinking skills and social information processing processes need to be supported starting from the pre-school period in inclusive pre-school classrooms. One of the interesting and child-centred effective methods that supports these skills is drama. In the study, it was aimed to examine the effect of drama on social information processing and creativity and the relationship between the change that drama caused on social information processing and creativity. The study was designed with an experimental design, one of the quantitative research designs. The study group was determined by criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods, and consists of 32 children. Personal Information Form, The Social Information Processing Interview – Preschool Version and The Test for Creative Thinking – Drawing Production were used as data collection tools. In the study, Drama Education consisting of 8 weeks and 16 sessions was applied to the experimental group. No intervention was made in the control group. The change that occurred in Social Information Processing and Creative Thinking after drama education has been an effective method in developing them. The relationship between Social Information Processing and Creative Thinking before and after education shows that the development of these processes is interrelated.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative thinking
• drama
• pre-school children
• social information processing
• inclusion

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of participating children.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

Before the data collection process, approval was obtained from Social and Human Sciences Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Committee (Document numbered 2021/422).

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

The approval of the parents and school administration of all participants included in the study was obtained. As the effectiveness of the application was observed, drama education was also applied to the control group after the study.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Author 1: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, review and editing. Author 2: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft.