The Effect of Drama on Enhancing Students' Critical Thinking Skills and their Achievement from the Students’ and Teachers’ of English Perspectives in Salfeet Directorate

Thumbnail Image
Date
2018-03-21
Authors
شقير, سائد جمعة حسن
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
This study sought to investigate the effect of drama on enhancing students' critical thinking skills and their achievement from the students' and teachers' of English perspectives at Salfeet schools through a quasi-experimental study. The study examined the effect of drama on the following variables: (gender, qualification, years of experience, training sessions and specialization) from teachers' of English perspectives. The researcher used three tools which were: (62) classroom observations applied on 10th graders at Bidya Secondary Boys' and Girls' Schools which lasted for 4 weeks, interviews on 8 teachers and 16 students from Salfeet schools and 25 questionnaires distributed randomly during the first semester of the academic year 2017/2018. After analyzing the collected data by using means, T- test and one way ANOVA, the researcher found that the outcomes of the classroom observations were in harmony with the outcomes of the interviews and the questionnaire which meant that teachers and students had the willing toward using drama at schools. The researcher also concluded that the findings of the questionnaire and the interview demonstrated that teachers' gender and specialization affected their attitude positively toward using drama whereas teachers' years of experience and training sessions affected their attitude toward using drama in favor of 4-6 session and 5-10 experience years respectively. The questionnaires' results revealed that the total degree of the effect of teaching drama on enhancing 10th students' critical thinking skills was (4.36) which suggested students' willingness to learn dramatic activities. As for the findings of classroom observation they were as the following: the longer time students know about drama the more they interact with the dramatic activities. The outcomes of the independent variables were as the following: there were no statistical significant differences at (α=0.05) of the effect of teaching drama on enhancing 10th students' critical thinking skills from the teachers of English perspectives in Salfeet Directorate attributed to the variables of qualification, specialisation and gender. On the other hand, there were statistically significant differences at (α=0.05) for training sessions which were (0.642) and years of experience which were (0.678). The findings of the study demonstrated that the majority of students and teachers of English had the willingness to use drama. Accordingly, the researcher advises teachers to use dramatic activities in order to develop critical thinking skills as one of the means that builds up students' personality, remove their shyness and their ability to interact with daily life situations. In a similar way, the researcher recommended the curriculum designers in the Ministry of Education to focus more on drama in learning in the English curricula for all levels. Another recommendation was that researchers are advised to make similar studies that seek to study the effect of using drama on enhancing students' critical thinking skills and their achievement.
Description
Keywords
Citation