The effects of educational drama on students’ key competencies: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

This study systematically evaluated the effects of educational drama interventions on students’ key competencies. A meta-analysis was conducted of randomized controlled trials and controlled clinical trials published through December 2025 and identified through searches of PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, and ProQuest Central. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using a random-effects model, and exploratory subgroup analyses were performed to examine whether participant characteristics, intervention duration, and study design might contribute to between-study heterogeneity. A total of 27 studies involving 2,239 participants were included. The findings suggest that educational drama may contribute to improvements in creativity (SMD = 1.12, 95% CI [0.68, 1.57]) and critical thinking (SMD = 0.91, 95% CI [0.16, 1.67]), with positive pooled effects also observed for communication (SMD = 2.90, 95% CI [1.59, 4.20]) and collaboration (SMD = 2.00, 95% CI [0.60, 3.39]). However, substantial heterogeneity was observed across all outcomes. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the pooled effects for communication and critical thinking remained statistically significant after the exclusion of studies reporting unusually large effect sizes, whereas the pooled effect for collaboration became non-significant after the exclusion of the study reporting the largest effect size. Overall, the available evidence suggests that educational drama may contribute to improvements in students’ creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Nevertheless, these findings should be interpreted with caution because of the substantial heterogeneity, the influence of several studies reporting unusually large effect sizes, and the absence of formal, design-specific risk-of-bias assessments, such as RoB 2 and ROBINS-I. Future research employing more rigorous study designs and standardized risk-of-bias assessment procedures is needed to strengthen the evidence base. Identifier INPLASY (INPLASY202640038).