Teachers' Views on Using Creative Drama as a Method in Social Studies Education

In today's world, scientific and technological developments are on the rise every day. These changes are reflected on the perspective towards education and lead to radical changes and updates in the education systems. As a result of these changes which are based on the reformation of the elements of the education and teaching processes, new approaches, methods and techniques have come out. Education system in Turkey was re-built on the basis of restructuring approach by being affected by these developments in the year 2005. Within this scope, there were many important changes that took place in social sciences education programs. Within the concept of fields and facts such as history, geography, economy, human's rights, civics, law and democracy, raising individuals that can be aware of their physical, emotional features as well as their interest, need and capabilities as free individuals was determined as the main purpose. In conformity with this purpose, the need to provide the individual with a learning environment, where the individual can feel safe inside, release emotions with control, develop decision making and problem solving abilities has come out. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social studies teachers' views on using drama as a teaching method in social studies education. In order to achieve this purpose, interviews had been made with 22 social studies teachers. The method of this research is qualitative and the research design of this research is phenomenology. The research data were collected wtih a semi-structured interview form. Collected data were analyzed with descriptive analysis. The views of the participants about the use of creative drama were presented in the graphics with frequency and percentages. The findings of the study prove that the teachers don't use creative drama method enough level and they have some problems about implementation of the method.