The prospective teacher' opinions relating reflective thinking skills

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the prospective teachers' opinions relating reflective thinking skills in terms of sex, education, grade, socio-economic condition of family and parent's educational status. The universe of research is formed by the sophomore and junior prospective teachers from Social Sciences Teaching (2011-2012 academic years) in Pamukkale University Faculty of Education. This study was conducted on totally 188 prospective teachers by using ratio group sampling method because of impossibility to reach all population. SPSS for Windows 16.00 (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences) was used in data analysis. In the study, the reflective thinking scale designed by Guney (2008) was applied and Cronbach Alpha coefficient reliability was found as 0.94. Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal Wallis analysis from descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests were used in the evaluation of quantitative data obtained from questionnaire. As the findings suggest, the prospective teachers' opinions relating reflective thinking skills are in the form of 'I entirely agree.' While it was found a significant difference between their opinions relating reflective thinking skills and sex variability, there was no significant difference between their opinions relating reflective skills and other variabilities (education, grade, socio-economic condition of family and parent's educational status).