Comparison of the Effectiveness of Teaching Philosophy and Educational-Pedagogical Theater on the Moral Development of Elementary Students

 Human is the only creature in this world who seeks happiness and morality is one of their most essential needs to achieve happiness. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of philosophy training and educational-pedagogical theater on the moral development of elementary students.

 The research design was a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest with a control group. The population of this study included all the fifth- and sixth-grade elementary students in Ardabil in 2020-21. Forty-eight people were selected through convenience sampling method and were assigned into two experimental groups (philosophy training and educational-pedagogical theater groups) and the control group (N=16 each). For the philosophy training group, a philosophy training program for children and for the educational-pedagogical theater group, a designed educational-pedagogical theater program were implemented. However, the control group did not receive any training. The Moral Growth Test was used to collect data. Data analysis was performed using descriptive indicators and MANCOVA with SPSS 26 statistical software.

Ethical Considerations:

 In this study, preserving the originality of the texts, honesty and trustworthiness were observed and the participants answered the questionnaires with the knowledge of the research objectives.

 The results of analysis of covariance showed that the philosophy training and educational-pedagogical theater had a significant effect on improving the moral development (p<0.05). Also, the results of Bonferroni post hoc test showed that the effect of the philosophy training on the students' moral development was significantly greater than that of the educational-pedagogical theater (p<0.05).

 The findings of this study provide useful information regarding the philosophy training and educational-pedagogical theater and their effect on improving moral development. Counselors and psychologists can use these interventions to improve the moral growth in elementary students.