Factors affecting critical thinking attitude: A study on primary pre-service teachers

Main purpose of this study is to determine critical thinking attitudes and views regarding to these attitudes of pre-service teachers studying at undergraduate program of primary school teaching and predict critical thinking attitudes about independent variables undertaken in research (gender, age, class level, parental educational status, perceived social economic level, perceived parental attitude, perceived personality trait and achievement).The study is figured in descriptive survey model. Qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are used in this study. Population and sample are chosen at two-stages. First and fourth grade pre-service teachers studied at undergraduate program of primary school teaching of 17 different faculties of education constitute quantitative population of the study. A total of 1342 primary pre-service teachers chosen from this population by using the technique of disproportional cluster sampling constitute the sample of the study. 91 pre-service teachers studying at undergraduate program of primary school teaching at Adnan Menderes University constitute qualitative target population of the study. 28 pre-service teachers selected voluntarily among pre-service teachers who had low and high critical thinking attitude constitute the study group.To collect the data, five different assessment instruments are used in the study. ?Critical Thinking Attitude Scale? developed by the researcher is used for determining critical thinking attitudes of pre-service teachers. Also a semi ? structured ?Interview Form? developed by the researcher is used for determining views with regard to critical thinking attitudes of pre-service teachers. ?Personality Test Role Based? developed by Bacanlı, İlhan and Aslan (2009) is used for determining personality types perceived by pre-service teachers. Scale of ?Child Rearing Styles? developed by Sümer and Güngör (1999) is used for determining perceived parental attitudes and ?Personal Information Form? is used for determining other demographic variables.SPSS ? Windows 11,5 package is used for the analysis of quantitative data. Descriptive statistics such as t- test, Anova, Manova and regression analysis are used for the research purposes. Descriptive analysis and content analysis are used for the qualitative data.According to the findings; critical thinking attitudes of primary pre-service teachers are above the average. Critical thinking attitudes of primary pre-service teachers do not differ significantly according to gender, class level and parental educational status. Critical thinking attitudes of primary pre-service teachers don?t differ significantly according to age except for subscales of ?Clarify for Reason? and ?Evidence-Based Decide?.Critical thinking attitudes of primary pre-service teachers differ significantly within the context of total point obtained from scale according to perceived social economic situation. Besides, total points obtained from critical thinking attitude scale of pre-service teachers differ significantly according to perceived parental attitude. There is a significant, low and positive relationship in general between critical thinking attitudes of pre-service teachers and perceived personality trait. Variables of ?receptive for experience?, ?responsible?, ?neuroticism?, ?receptive / interested parental attitude? and ?academic achievement? have a meaningful effect for predicting critical thinking attitudes. Variables of ?reasonable?, ?neuroticism?, ?receptive interested parental attitude?, ?achievement?, ?class? and ?age? predict self-regulation. Although the views of pre-service teachers with regards to critical thinking attitudes differ according to their critical thinking attitudes, they have an agreement on the belief for the requirement of being a part.