INVESTIGATING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS AND CRITICAL THINKING DISPOSITIONS OF TEACHER CANDIDATES

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between academic achievements and critical thinking dispositions of teacher candidates in Faculty of Education and to find out whether critical thinking dispositions and academic achievements scores of teacher candidates differ according to gender, field of the study, income level of parents, type of high school. The population consists of the teacher candidates at the Department of Primary School Teaching, Social Scinece Teaching, Turkish Teaching and Science Teaching at Ege University and Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Education. The study group is determined by convenience sampling method. Scores of teacher candidates obtained through “Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory” developed by Akbıyık (2002) and students’ overall grade point avarage are used in the study. SPSS 17.00 program is used for analysis of the data. Research design is survey and correlational model.