Evaluation of Critical Thinking and Reflective Thinking Skills among Science Teacher Candidates

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate and determine the critical thinking and reflective thinking skills of science teacher candidates. The study was performed with the participation of 30 teacher candidates enrolled in the science teaching department of a university in Turkey. Scales administered during the study included the California Critical Thinking Scale and the Reflective Thinking Skills for Problem Solving Scale. Frequency distributions were calculated for data obtained from both scales. Based on the study results, it was determined that while the teacher candidates generally provided responses that displayed effective critical and reflective thinking skills, the frequency of the responses for some of the scale items lacked a clear distribution in terms of illustrating the teacher candidates’ stance towards these thinking skills.

Keywords: Critical thinking, Reflective thinking, Science teaching, Teacher candidate