Preservice teachers' thinking styles, dispositions, and changes in their teacher behaviors

Abstract

Understanding preservice teachers' thinking styles and dispositions and how these are related to positive changes in their teacher behaviors provide valuable information for teacher preparation. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between preservice teachers' critical-thinking dispositions and three thinking styles (judicial, legislative, and executive) and their behavior change in a computer simulation. 178 preservice teachers participated in this study. Their interactive teaching experiences were measured via the CS-TGCTS simulation. The findings in this study suggest that preservice teachers with a high level of critical-thinking dispositions and those with judicial or legislative thinking styles are analytical and reflective vis A-vis their teaching practice and, as a consequence, they experienced great behavior change, whereas those with executive styles did not exhibit significant behavior change at the end of the simulated teaching.