Investigation of creative thinking tendencies of prospective mathematics teachers according to some variables

In this study, it is aimed to determine the creativity levels of prospective mathematics teachers. In addition, it has been tried to determine whether there is a significant relationship between prospective teachers' creative thinking tendencies and class, gender, blood type, favourite colour, hand used to write, academic grade point average, whether or not they get preschool education and play chess. Scanning method was used in the research. The study group of the research consists of 235 prospective teacher, 56 of whom are first year, 69 are second grade, 57 are third grade and 53 are fourth grade, studying in the Department of Mathematics Education at Kastamonu University Faculty of Education. The data obtained are analyzed using SPSS 22.0 package program. In order to determine the correlation between these variables and creative thinking tendency, One Way ANOVA was applied to investigate whether there is a significant relationship. When the findings obtained as a result of the research are analyzed, the arithmetic mean is calculated as (¯X= 44,57) according to the scores of the prospective mathematics teacher from the whole creativity scale, and the standard deviation was obtained as (S = 8,28). On the other hand, the minimum creativity score obtained from the scale was 23,0 and the maximum creativity score obtained was 68,0. This situation shows that the creative thinking tendencies of the pre-service mathematics teachers are above average. In addition, it was determined that the variables examined according to the t- test results did not have a significant effect on the creative thinking tendency; the average of prospective teachers studying in the first grade according to the scores they got from the scale is (¯X= 42,21); the average of prospective teachers studying in the second year is (¯X= 45,21); third classes (¯X= 45,61); Averages of fourth year prospective teachers were obtained as (¯X= 45,13). It was noteworthy that the creative thinking tendencies of prospective teachers did not change according to the class degrees. As a result of this research, it is recommended to examine the creativity of prospective teachers according to other variables, to add and apply courses to develop higher-level thinking methods in curriculum in education faculties. In addition, it is predicted that the studies on determining the mathematical creativity of prospective mathematics teachers will contribute to the literature.