Educational drama shows promise in boosting creativity and social skills, review finds

A meta-analysis of 27 studies suggests educational drama can enhance creativity, critical thinking, and communication among students, though results vary and more rigorous research is needed.

Educational drama may help students build creativity, critical thinking and social skills, according to a meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology that pooled evidence from 27 controlled studies involving 2,239 participants. The review found positive average effects across four areas, with the strongest signals appearing in communication and collaboration, though the authors cautioned that the results were highly inconsistent from study to study.

The review drew on randomised controlled trials and controlled clinical trials published through the end of 2025, with searches carried out in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest Central and Google Scholar. The researchers followed PRISMA 2020 reporting guidance and registered the protocol with INPLASY. Participants ranged from preschool children to postgraduate students, but most studies involved younger pupils in preschool and compulsory education, which limits how far the findings can be extended to older learners.

Across the included studies, educational drama was associated with a sizeable improvement in creativity, with a pooled standardised mean difference of 1.12. Critical thinking also improved, with a pooled effect of 0.91. The estimated gains were even larger for communication and collaboration, at 2.90 and 2.00 respectively. But the authors said the spread of results was wide, with heterogeneity high for every outcome, meaning the size of the effect varied markedly across studies.

That caution matters. When the researchers removed studies with unusually large effects, the communication and critical-thinking results remained statistically significant but became much smaller, and the collaboration result was no longer significant. The authors also found signs of possible publication bias for communication, and noted that they used a general quality checklist rather than design-specific risk-of-bias tools such as RoB 2 for randomised studies or ROBINS-I for non-randomised studies. Subgroup analyses suggested that age group and intervention length may influence outcomes, but the authors described those patterns as exploratory rather than conclusive.

Even with those limits, the review adds to evidence that drama-based learning can do more than support performance on stage. Role-play, improvisation and scenario-based activities may give students repeated chances to practise expression, perspective-taking and group problem-solving. The authors said future research should use stronger study designs, standardised outcome measures and clearer reporting before schools can treat educational drama as a reliably evidence-based classroom method.