Does creative drama promote language development in early childhood? A review of the methods and measures employed in the empirical literature

Mages, W.K. (2008). Does creative drama promote language development in early childhood? A review of the methods and measures employed in the empirical literature. Review of educational research, 78(1), 124-152.


This study might be entitled “What’s wrong with the research to date on the relationship between creative drama participation by young children and their language development.” The main point seems to be that if this body of literature were less flawed, then administrators and other educational decision-makers would believe us when we say creative drama will benefit language development (and in turn literacy development, and in turn test scores), and if they believe us, maybe they’ll stop cutting the arts out of the curriculum. Maybe so, maybe not.

I worry that the goal of developing collaborative “lines of research” with better developed definitions and reporting standards may be a pipe dream due to the kinds of individuals who do creative drama research or early childhood research. Folks in these two fields are typically “free spirits” who go their own way and who resist constraints. They like creating their own terms and doing things in their own way. Still, if we could reinstate the arts to their proper important place, it may be worth it to standardize.