The effect of drama based social skill education on social intercourse and cooperation behaviours of 6 years old children

This study is carried out in order to analyse the effect of ?Drama Based Social Skill Education? on development of social intercourse and cooperation behaviours of 6-year-old children. Work group is formed by 34 of 6-year-old children who attend the two preschool classes of a Ministry of Education controlled primary school in the first half of 2007-2008 academic year, in Söke district of Aydın city. The research is an experimental model using pre-test, post-test and control group. In accordance with concerned model, after the determination of the experiment and control groups, ?Cooperation, Social Intercourse 1 (Prolongation of Positive Intercourse) and Social Intercourse 2 (Prolongation Intercourse with Group) Behaviours Sub-Scales? of ?Behaviour Grading Scale? developed by Arı and Çağdaş (1999) were filled for both group. ?Drama Based Social Skill Education? composing of 40 activities was applied on experiment group children during 12 weeks. Daily education activities were not interfered for control group. After 12 weeks, same scales were applied to experiment and control groups again as post-test and gathered data was analysed and assessed.Mann Whitney U test was used in order to determine whether ?Cooperation, Social Intercourse 1 (Prolongation of Positive Intercourse) and Social Intercourse 2 (Prolongation Intercourse with Group) Behaviours Sub-Scales? of ?Behaviour Grading Scale? pre-test average of children differ on meaningful level or not and Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks test used to determine whether post-test means differ on meaningful level or not.According to the gathered data, it was seen that there is no meaningful difference in experiment and control groups? ?Cooperation, Social Intercourse 1 (Prolongation of Positive Intercourse) and Social Intercourse 2 (Prolongation Intercourse with Group) Behaviours Sub-Scales? of ?Behaviour Grading Scale? pre-test averages (p>.05). After ?Drama Based Social Skill Education? applications related with Social Intercourse and cooperation behaviours, when the pre-test means of experiment and control groups children were in control, a meaningful difference was found in ?Cooperation, Social Intercourse 1 (Prolongation of Positive Intercourse) and Social Intercourse 2 (Prolongation Intercourse with Group) Behaviours Sub-Scales? of ?Behaviour Grading Scale? post-test averages, in favour of experiment group (p<.05).Key words: Preschool Education, Social Intercourse, Cooperation, Drama in Education, Social Skill