Examining the relationship between entrepreneurship characteristics and reflective thinking levels of pre-service teachers

In today's rapidly increasing competition environment of the knowledge age, surviving and existing depend on the economic development levels of the societies. Entrepreneurship has become more and more important in the development of the civilization, especially with the move from industrial society to knowledge society. With entrepreneurshipideas are brought together with production factors and production has been made. Today, it is necessary to support, encourage and provide entrepreneurship trainings which have a significant role in the economic and social development of the societies. Reflective thinking, a high order thinking skill, is defined as cognitive questioning pioneering an individual to produce new knowledge and develop alternative ways. It is seen that there are many similarities between individuals with reflective thinking skills and individuals who have entrepreneurship skills. Therefore, this study aims at examining the relationship between the pre-service teachers' entrepreneurship skills and their reflective thinking levels. The population of the study is the pre-service teachers studying at Bartın University and Kastamonu University. The study is a quantitative study and is carried out as a review. "Reflective Thinking Tendency Scale" and "Entrepreneurship Scale for University Students" are used as data collection instruments. And t-test, univariate analysis of variance (anova), scheffe test and pearson product-moment correlation analysis are carried out. And the data are analysed and interpreted using statistical techniques using SPSS for Windows version: 22.0. Reflective thinking levels and entrepreneurship characteristics of the pre-service teachers are examined based on gender, department and grade level variables. Based on the findings in the study, the following results are derived: It is found that the highest score in reflective thinking tendency scale is under "Inquiry-based and effective teaching" sub-scale. It is seen that female pre-service teachers' reflective thinking levels is higher compared to male pre-service teachers. Similarly, the reflective thinking levels of pre-service teachers studying at primary school and social studies teaching departments are higher compared to other departments. And the entrepreneurship characteristics of the pre-service teachers in the study are found as "high". There are no significant differences in entrepreneurship characteristics based on gender. It is found that based on department variable, pre-service teachers in primary school teaching and maths teaching departments have higher entrepreneurship characteristics compared to other departments. Based on the findings of the study, it is possible to say that pre-service teachers have high entrepreneurship characteristics and high reflective thinking levels.