The acquisition of environmental literacy skills with the creative drama method in the primary school social studies course: a mixed method research

Today, environmental problems are increasing compared to the past. Human beings, consciously or unconsciously, damage the environment they live in, which causes environmental problems to grow day by day. To raise environmental awareness from an early age, environmental education is included in the curriculum of many countries. In Turkey, the Social Studies Curriculum includes "environmental literacy skill" among the 27 skills aimed at raising students' awareness of the environment. In the acquisition of this skill, it is expected that the information learned will turn into behavior. In the development of environmental literacy skills, creative drama method is an effective tool to make knowledge permanent through experience by encouraging active participation of students. This method provides a student-centered learning environment and ensures permanent learning of the subject. In this study, the effect of creative drama method on primary school 4th grade students' acquisition of environmental literacy skills within the scope of the Social Studies Curriculum is examined. The aim is to determine the extent to which students adopt this skill and transform it into practice. To achieve this aim, the method of the research was designed as a convergent parallel design as one of the mixed method research designs. The research was designed with a quasi-experimental design in the quantitative dimension and a case study design in the qualitative dimension. The study group of the research consists of a total of 49 students studying in the fourth grade of primary school in a public school in Menteşe district of Muğla province of Türkiye in 2023-2024 academic year. In the data collection process, the "Primary School Environmental Literacy Scale" and "Environmental Literacy Achievement Test" developed by the researcher were used as quantitative data collection tools to determine the "Environmental Literacy" skills of the students, and student interview forms, observation notes kept during the implementation process and process outputs in the implementation were used as qualitative data collection tools. In the analysis of the quantitative data collected, dependent t-test, ANCOVA and independent t-test were used using SPSS package program. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis technique and inductive approach. As a result of the analysis of the data obtained from the primary school environmental literacy scale and environmental literacy achievement test of the students in the groups, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups. According to the results of the study, positive changes occurred in the environmental knowledge and behaviors of the students in the experimental group in which creative drama method was used. These changes were statistically significant. The results of the interviews, observations and process outputs with the experimental group support the results obtained in the quantitative dimension of the research. In other words, it was determined that the students who were trained with creative drama method were more successful than the control group students who were trained with traditional teaching methods. KEYWORDS: Creative drama, Environmental literacy, Skill teaching.