Investigating the effects of silent book-based creative drama activities on emotional perspective-taking skills of preschool children

This study aims to examine the effect of silent book-based creative drama activities designed for preschool children on their ability to adopt an emotional perspective. Using a pre-test post-test control group quasi-experimental design, one of quantitative research methods, this study included a total of 36 preschool children: 12 in the experimental group, 12 in control group 1, and 12 in control group 2. Within the scope of the research, a total of 24 activities were implemented over 6 weeks for the experimental group. No intervention was made in the control groups. A pre-test was administered to the experimental, control 1, and control 2 groups before the intervention, and a post-test was administered to all three groups after the intervention. A follow-up test was administered to the experimental group two weeks after the post-test. The data obtained from the tests were analyzed using the SPSS-25 software package. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to determine whether there were significant differences between the groups. The dependent samples t-test was used to compare the pre-test and post-test scores in the control groups, and the repeated measures one-way ANOVA test was used to compare the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up measurements in the experimental group. The significance level was set at .05 for all analyses. This level was used as the basic criterion to evaluate whether the results obtained were statistically significant. According to the results obtained, when looking at the post-test scores, the experimental group's post-test score was higher than the control groups, and a statistically significant difference was found in the happy-sad subscale of the scale. The follow-up test administered to the experimental group revealed that the silent book-based creative drama activities had a lasting effect. The statistically significant difference observed in the experimental group in a single dimension of the scale and other findings of the study were discussed in line with existing research in the literature, and recommendations were made for practitioners and researchers.