Thinking styles of primay school teachers

The purpose of this study is to investigate primary school teachers' views on thinking styles. The participants of this study were 190 primary school teachers (85 males and 105 females) who worked in 15 schools in Bolu, Goynuk and Mudurnu during the academic year of 2009-10. Data was collected through a survey from the population.Data collection instrument adopted for the purpose of this study consisted of two parts. The first part included background questions with respect to the demographic characteristics of the participants. The second part of the instrument included "Thinking Styles Inventory" developed by Stenberg and Wagner (1988) to investigate those different thinking styles. The reliability and validity of this inventory were conducted by Fer (2005).Data collected from 190 teachers were analyzed trough descriptive statistics (percentage, frequency, means, t-test, one way analysis of variance, standard deviation, and tukey test).The results of the study are as follows;1. The demographic data revealed that 55.3 % of the participants were female and 44.7 % were male. 70 % of the teachers were with in the age range of 20 to 30. 80.1 % of them had 1 to 10 years of teaching experience. 48.4 % of the teachers were classroom teachers while 51.6 % were branch teachers.2. The participating teachers were found to have Legislative Thinking Style ( =4.251) the most and Oligarchic Thinking Style ( =3.126) the least.3. The study revealed significant differences between the participant gender Anarchic Thinking Styles (P=0.039). There is no significant difference between age and teaching experience. The study also revealed significant differences between the type of teachers (class or branch) and their Internal Thinking Styles (P=0.026).Key Words: Thinking styles, primary school teachers, classroom teacher, branch teacher.