Evaluation of Prospective Primary and Pre-School Teachers' Critical Thinking Level

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the critical thinking level of the prospective primary school teachers and prospective pre-school teachers. The setting consists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students studying at Elementary Education Department including Preschool Education Department and Primary School Education Department. The data were obtained via the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTD). The obtained data were analyzed in terms of the opinions about critical thinking tendency of the prospective teachers depending on their gender differences, their study hours, and their departments and t test was employed to find out the differences between means. ANOVA techniques were used to observe whether there was a difference in disposition of prospective teachers' critical thinking depending on study years, their parents' education level, and Tukey test was applied to designate the difference within the classes. Eventually, the results concluded that there were some significant differences between the prospective primary school teachers and prospective pre-school teachers on some dimensions of critical thinking regarding gender, education time, departments, classes and parents' educational level.