Investigating the relationship between critical thinking dispositions and academic literacy levels of pre-service social studies teachers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between critical thinking dispositions and academic literacy levels of pre-service social studies teachers. In the study, relational survey method, one of quantitative research methods, was employed. In determining the universities, simple random sampling was used. Accordingly, 2 universities from each region at 6 levels included in the Socio-Economic Development Ranking Survey of Provinces and Regions (SEGE-2017) report were included in the study. As a result, 1106 pre-service social studies teachers selected from 12 universities using stratified sampling method. The data were collected through the "Critical Thinking Disposition Scale", "Academic Literacy Scale" and the Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson product-moment correlation and simple linear regression analysis. The results of the present study showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between pre-service social studies teachers' critical thinking disposition scores and their academic literacy level. In addition, it was revealed that pre-service social studies teachers'critical thinking dispositions predicted 36.8% of their academic literacy levels.