Pre-service English language teachers' reflective thinking tendencies and their attitudes towards teaching profession

Abstract

As reflective thinking is regarded as a mental and affective process, reflective practices and tendencies toward it may have an impact on teacher candidates’ mental and emotional attitudes towards the teaching profession during their teaching-learning processes. Therefore, this present study firstly aims to analyze pre-service teachers’ reflective thinking tendencies and attitudes toward teaching profession, and then the relationship between these variables. The study was conducted in Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University with English Language Teaching Department 3rd and 4th grade pre-service teachers during the 2018-2019 fall term. In accordance with the aim and research questions of study, the research study was designed as non-experimental with single and correlational scanning models. In this respect, data were collected through both “reflective thinking tendencies scale” and “attitudes towards teaching profession scale.” For the analysis of the data, descriptive and correlational statistics were used, and results showed that there is a significant correlation between reflective thinking tendencies and attitudes towards teaching profession of participants. Also, gender is not a determinant for reflective thinking tendency; however, female pre-service teachers are more positive attitudes towards teaching profession than male counterparts.