Examination of empathic and critical thinking tendencies of science teacher candidates

In this study, it was aimed to examine the critical thinking and empathic tendencies of science teacher candidates in terms of gender, class level, socio-economic level, mother education level and father education level variables. It has also been investigated whether there is a significant relationship between the science teachers' critical thinking and empathic tendencies. This research is a descriptive study with a scanning model. The research group consists of 208 teacher candidates who are studying in Fırat University, Faculty of Education, Department of Science Education, 1,2,3 and 4th grade. In the research, "Personal Information Form" , "California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI)" originally developed by Facione and Giancarlo (1992) and adapted to Turkish by Kökdemir (2003) and "Empathic Tendency Scale (ETS)" developed by Dökmen (1988) were used. The researcher presented a personal information form aimed at informing prospective teachers about gender, class level, socio-economic level, mother education level and father education level. The data obtained in the research process were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 statistical package program. One-way variance analysis (ANOVA), t test, Kruskal Wallis H test and correlation analysis were used to analyze the data. According to findings; it was found that there was a significant difference between the critical thinking tendency of science teacher candidates and gender and class level change, there was no significant difference perceived between critical thinking tendency and socio-economic level, mother education level and father education level. It was concluded that there was no significant difference between the empathic tendency of science teacher candidates and gender, socio-economic level, mother education level and father education level, and there was a meaningful difference between empathic tendency and class level. It is concluded that there is a relationship between critical thinking tendency and empathic tendency are moderately in the positive direction. Keywords: Critical thinking, Critical thinking tendency, Empathy, Empathic tendency, Science teacher candidates.