The effect of educational drama technique enriched with concept cartoons on the academic achievement of 7th grade students in the subject of "Pure substances and mixtures"

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of concept cartoons and educational drama technique on the achievement of 7th grade students in pure substances and mixtures. The study group of this research consists of 43 students attending the 7th grade of a state secondary school in Akalan Village of Eğil district of Diyarbakır. In this study, unequaled pretest-posttest control group design, which is one of the weak experimental designs, was used. While the lessons in the experimental group were taught with the educational drama technique enriched with concept cartoons, the control group was taught according to the existing science curriculum. As a data collection tool a 23-question multiple-choice achievement test covering the subjects of "pure substances and mixtures" was administered to the students as a pre-test and post-test. In addition, a student interview form was used to determine the opinions of the students in the experimental group about the applied method. Quantitative data obtained from the study were analyzed using the SPSS package program. The qualitative data obtained from the student interview form were analyzed as themes and expressed as frequencies and percentages. As a result of the analysis of the study data, it was determined that instruction based on educational drama technique enriched with concept cartoons contributed to the 7th grade students' understanding of "pure substances and mixtures". In addition, according to the results obtained from the interview form applied to the students, it was determined that the students were satisfied with using these techniques and they wanted to use them in other lessons.