The use of drama in secondary education to increase motivation for learning about environmental issues

Abstract

Environmental issues like climate change and pollution have become more prominent in our daily lives. Sea levels are rising, whether is turning more extreme and the amount of plastic litter is so immense that it can even be found in our food sources. Both the media and schools give increasing amounts of attention to environmental topics and the importance of these topics becomes clearer every day. In this study a lesson series was developed to see whether using drama in socio-scientific inquiry based lessons about human impact on the environment could increase students motivation for the subject. Two classes served as a control group and received education mostly based on their textbook and making online assignments, while two other classes were asked to write a play and perform it before their classmates. . Data about the students’ motivation was gathered using questionnaires that served as pre- and post-tests. During the lessons students were observed and groups of students were interviewed. The results show a trend in which the drama group showed an increase of motivation during the study as opposed to the control group, where no increase in motivation was observed.