The effect of the creative drama method on preschool Children’s fairy tale comprehension: The case of “The Bremen Town Musicians”

In this study, we aimed to examine the effect of using both creative drama and direct narration methods with the story The Bremen Town Musicians on the story comprehension of children aged 60–72 months, as well as their views on the creative drama application and the story itself. We employed an embedded mixed-methods design, combining quantitative and qualitative research. To investigate the effect of creative drama on story comprehension, we used the Solomon Four-Group Design with a pre-test and post-test control group. To support the quantitative data, we collected qualitative data on children’s views regarding the creative drama process, reinforcing the findings. The study group consisted of 96 children (24 in each of the four groups) attending independent preschools in İzmir’s Buca district during the 2024–2025 academic year. We used a knowledge test on The Bremen Town Musicians and a semi-structured interview form. The Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis H tests were applied. The pre-test results did not influence the post-test scores of the experimental group. Findings showed that children who experienced the story through creative drama had higher post-test scores than those who received direct narration. Analysis of children’s views on the creative drama process and the story revealed themes of “enactment,” “acquisitions,” “emotions,” and “changes.” Enactment included imitation, singing, wearing costumes, and coming up with a title. Acquisitions involved new friendships, emotions, helping others, collaboration, and problem solving. Emotions reflected enjoying the fairy tale, feeling happy, excited, sad, or afraid. Changes included adding different animals, robbers turning good or not being present, the police showing up, owners treating them well, and having the animals be younger. The results highlight the effectiveness of creative drama in enhancing young children’s story comprehension.