Evaluation of Critical Thinking Skills and Self-Efficacy Levels among Science Teacher Candidates

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate and determine the critical thinking skills and the general self-efficacy of science teacher candidates. The study was performed with the participation of 32 teacher candidates from the science teaching department of a university in Turkey. Scales administered during the study included the California Critical Thinking Scale and the General Self-Efficacy 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 illustrated effective critical thinking skills and self-efficacy, 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 abilities.

Keywords: Critical thinking, Self-efficacy, Science teaching, Teacher candidate