Abstract:

This research is a descriptive study for determining the reflective thinking levels of the social studies teachers. The universe of the study is the social studies teachers working in Şanlıurfa within 2009-2010 education year. Due to the accessibility of the universe of the study, no sampling was employed for the research, 277 social studies teachers working in the towns and villages of Şanlıurfa provinces participated in the study voluntarily. In order to analyze the data collected by means of Reflective Teaching Tendency Scale by Semerci (2007), arithmetic mean, standard deviation, ANOVA, Mann Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis, and LSD tests were used. At the end of the study it was found that while the reflective thinking levels of the social study teachers were found very high, their most positive perception related to the reflective thinking skills was “Open-minded” dimension. Although there is no meaningful difference in the statistics performed, it was found that female teachers have a higher reflective thinking tendency in interrogating and effective teaching, teaching responsibility and scientific, researching, being foresighted and sincere dimensions and have more positive perceptions about their profession. While there is no meaningful difference on the reflective thinking levels of the teachers on the basis of the length of service and the size of the location (province, district, village) they serve, it was found that the teachers with a length of service between 11 and 15 years have a higher reflective thinking tendency.

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