Abstract:

The aim of this study is to reveal the impact of sex, type of high school graduate, department, kind of education, class and age on teacher candidates’ ability to solve problems and their level of using critical thinking. Also, it aims at determining the relation between high school students’ ability of solving problems and critical thinking. The paradigm consists of 924 teacher candidates. The data of the study was gathered with the help of questions which contain high school students’ demographical qualifications, “Inventory of Solving Problem” that was developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and translated into Turkish by Şahin and Heppner (1993) and “Measure of Tendency of Critical Thinking” developed by Akbıyık (2002) that includes views about critical thinking. According to the results of the research, (1) It is defined that sex is an important (meaningful) predictor for teacher candidates’ ability to solve problems. Kind of education, class, age, type of high school graduate and department is not a meaningful predictor for high school students’ ability to solve problems. (2) It is defined that sex, department and kind of education is an important (meaningful) predictor for teacher candidates’ level of critical thinking. Class, type of high school graduate and age is not a meaningful predictor for teacher candidates’ level of critical thinking. (3) There is a positive and a medium-level relation between teacher candidates’ ability of critical thinking and solving problems

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