Critical thinking abilities of teacher trainees

ABSTRACT CRITICAL THINKING ABILITIES OF TEACHER TRAINEES Dilruba KÜRÜM Anadolu University Graduate School of Educational Sciences Department of Educational Sciences Curriculum and Instruction Program July 2002 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Mustafa SA?LAM Today's information society needs to have individuals who think continuously, who share their ideas with others, who transfer these ideas into daily life, and who will develop themselves and the society. To train individuals equipped with these qualities is possible by enabling them with certain thinking skills, especially critical thinking skills. Therefore, training individuals who are able to think is a priority in the education systems in all countries. Thus, teachers must assume the responsibility of having students acquire critical thinking skills in schools. For teachers to be able to do this, they themselves must have critical thinking abilities. Hence, teacher trainees must be equipped with thinking skills during their university education and in in-service training. The aim of this study is to identify critical thinking ability levels and the levels of thinking abilities that constitute this ability and the factors which influence critical thinking of teacher trainees studying at Anadolu University Education Faculty. The study was conducted with 1047 students who were first, second, and third year students of 11 different teacher-training programs of 5 departments of Anadolu vıUniversity Education Faculty in 2000-2001 school year. Data was gathered by means of a personal information form to identify certain personal characteristics and the "Watson-Glaser Critical Reasoning Ability Questionnaire". Certain personal characteristics of the teacher trainees with the personal information form in nine questions, and their critical thinking abilities with "Watson-Glaser Critical Reasoning Ability Questionnaire" in 100 items under five sub-tests including Inference, Perception of Hypothesis, Deduction, Commenting, and Evaluation of Opposite Views were identified. The SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) for Windows 7.5 program was used to analyze the data. To the data, Independent Groups t-test (One sample test) used to compare two groups and one-way ANOVA was used to compare more than two groups in case the "F" test statistics is found to be significant, Tukey HSD (Tukey' s Honestly Significant Difference Test) and LSD multiple comparison test were conducted to determine the group that caused the difference. The results of the study showed that teacher trainees' critical thinking abilities and all levels of thinking abilities that constitute these abilities were at mid-level and that these abilities were affected by different factors such as age, high school types graduated, score type and level in university entrance exam, program being studied, education and income level of the family, and activities held for developing themselves. Vll