Investigation of the Relationship between Pre-service Teachers’ Learning Styles and Their Critical Thinking Disposition

Mustafa Yeler,Gürbüz Ocak

doi:10.22555/joeed.v8i1.96

Abstract

This study is Investigation of the Relationship between Pre-service Teachers’ Learning Styles and Their Critical Thinking Disposition The study was carried out with the participation of 358 candidate teachers- 243 female and 115 males- who were identified by way of proportional sampling from among 612 freshmen students who study in different programs in the Faculty of Education at Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. Grasha-Reichmann Learning Styles Scales (1974) and Critical Thinking Tendencies Scales by Semerci (2016) were used as data collecting tools for this study. The data obtained by the application of these scales were analyzed using parametric tests t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation, two-way ANOVA and regression according to the nature and scope of the data. In all operations, p<.05 significance level was identified. It was found that there is a significant relationship at moderate level between the learning styles and the critical thinking tendencies of the candidate teachers. Depending on the variables such as age, gender, the type of the high school and departments, a moderate relationship was found between learning styles and critical thinking tendencies. While the common impact of age and learning styles; gender and learning styles; the high school type and learning styles were not significant, the common impact of department and learning styles were found to be significant at moderate level. On the other hand, when age and learning styles; gender and learning styles; departments and learning styles, and high school types and learning styles are taken into consideration together, it was found that each coupling could explain approximately 25% of the tendencies of critical thinking. In the light shed by these results, it is suggested that the learning styles and critical thinking tendencies must be considered together in teaching-learning processes designed for candidate teachers.

Highlights

One of the most important characteristics of a human being, defined as a bio-psycho-social being, is the ability to learn and think
It was concluded that the graduated high school type and learning styles (LS) variables explain the 25% of the total variance in critical thinking disposition (CTD) scores
Since the Durbin-Watson statistic value is close to 2, there is no autocorrelation between high school type and LS and CTD

Summary

Introduction

One of the most important characteristics of a human being, defined as a bio-psycho-social being, is the ability to learn and think. Pritchard (2015) describes learning as behavioral change that occurs due to experience, the knowledge acquisition process in which behavior is shaped or controlled and an individual process in which understanding is structured based on gaining experience from various sources. In these definitions of learning, the concepts of acquisition, individual experience, achievement, construct, etc. It is important to recognize individual characteristics for the teaching-learning process to be more effective. These requirements have led to the emergence of the concepts such as LS, learning preferences, learning strategies, learning approaches, etc., which have been used intensely in educational sciences today and emphasize individual characteristics

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion