The effect of creative writing practices integrated with story-based learning approach on secondary school students' writing attitudes and development of creative writing skills

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of creative writing practices integrated with the story-based learning approach on the writing attitudes and creative writing skills of 6th grade middle school students. The study was conducted with a convergent parallel design approach, one of the mixed method research designs. The study utilized the pre-test-post-test paired control group model, one of the quasi-Experiment models, in the quantitative dimension of the study, and the case study, one of the qualitative research methods, in the qualitative dimension. The study group consisted of 6th grade students attending two different public schools in Aksaray province in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The study was conducted with 54 students, 27 in the Experiment group and 27 in the control group. During the education process, creative writing practices integrated with the story-based learning approach were carried out with the students in the Experiment group, while the students in the control group were taught with writing activities in the existing textbook. The application lasted 8 weeks. The creative writing achievement based on the pre-test and post-test results of the students both in the Experiment and the control groups were evaluated with the "Creative Writing Assessment Scale" while their attitudes towards writing were evaluated with the "Writing Attitude Scale". In addition to descriptive statistics, the quantitative data obtained in the study were analyzed using (Independent) Samples t-test, Mann Whitney U, Wilcoxon's Test of Ranked Associations, Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA); the qualitative data obtained through semi-structured interview forms were analyzed using content analysis technique. As a result of the research, it was concluded that creative writing practices integrated with the story-based learning approach improved students' creative writing skills.