Investigation of the Relationship Between Pre-service Teachers' Lateral Thinking Levels and Problem Solving Skills

The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent problem solving skill contributes to the prediction of lateral thinking. The study group of the research consisted of 357 girls (75.2%) and 118 boys (24.8%), totally 475 university students, who are attending Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Faculty of Education. The Problem Solving Inventory developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and the Lateral Thinking Scale developed by Semerci (2016) were used in the study to collect data. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean and standard deviation) and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data obtained in the study. According to the findings of the study, the lateral thinking levels of the teacher candidates are high and their problem-solving skills are at a positive medium level. While teacher candidates' confidence in problem solving ability and approach-avoidance scores positively affect their lateral thinking level, their personal control scores negatively affect them. In addition, pre-service teachers' total scores of problem solving skills significantly predicted their lateral thinking scores.