Browsing by Author "Koivula, Sini"

Objectives. The aim of this study is to find out in which ways the examinee drama lessons enhance students' thinking skills and what is the quality of the examinee lessons from the aspect of concept development. Furthermore, the aim is to study how the CLASS-system applies as an analyzing tool in concept development (or enhancing thinking skills) during drama lessons. On the grounds of previous studies thinking skills are defined to contain both creative thinking skills and critical thinking skills. In addition, the unification of creative thinking and critical thinking and the thinking that is generated due to the unification are described in this study. Testing and developing of The Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS) in context of drama education is an important part of this study. Methods. This study is a qualitative case study which also contains some features of quantitative study. The subject of the present study was eight drama lessons given to pupils ranging from first to third graders. The research material was collected by videotaping two lessons from four classroom teachers all specialized in drama. The material was analyzed by using the CLASS observation tool's part "concept development". The research material was analyzed by two examiners in the intention of improving the reliability of the study. Results and conclusions. The study shows that drama lessons support the development of pupils' thinking skills as pupils were able to participate to activities that enhance thinking skills during the examinee lessons. Those activities were carried out in accordance of the CLASS observation tool's part concept development. The drama lessons received middle range grades (3–7 on a scale of 1–7) with the CLASS tool in concept development. When the lessons were evaluated with the observation tool that was modified specifically for evaluation of drama lessons, the lessons got even higher grades. These results show that it is possible to enhance pupils thinking skills and support the development of those skills during drama lessons. Some of the lessons got high grades from the dimension of analysis and reasoning and from the dimension of creating at the same time. This indicates that the usage of drama in teaching makes it possible to learn and enhance creative thinking and critical thinking simultaneously and that when using drama it is possible that creative thinking and critical thinking are joined together. In addition, the CLASS-tool turned out to be a convenient instrument for developing a suitable tool for analyzing the quality of drama education. As a result of the study a tool for analyzing the part of concept development during drama lessons was created.