Abstract

Critical thinking is one of the skills that exist in the Turkish course curriculum and is aimed to be acquired by students. The objective of the study is to determine prospective Turkish teachers’ perspectives regarding the concept of critism, which is both a mental exercise and carries an important role in the world of ideas. In order to assess this, voluntary interviews were conducted with prospective teachers studying their 2nd and 3rd years at Department of Turkish Education in the Faculty of Education at Yildiz Technical University during the spring semester of the 2014-2015 academic year. To determine the participant pool, the typical case sampling method—one of the purposive sampling methods—was used, and 45 prospective teachers were interviewed. A semi-structured data collection tool was developed to collect data. Descriptive analysis technique was used to analyze these data. At the end of the study, it was concluded that the majority of the participating prospective Turkish teachers do not believe that the education they receive improves their critical thinking skills. It was also seen that the participant teachers were unable to develop any methods that would help them improve their future students’ critical thinking skills. The prospective teachers do have some ideas regarding how to do so; however, these kinds of ideas have never been presented to them under a an official technique or within a school course. Their ideas come from merely their personal views, which they themselves have inferred from their past experiences.

Key words: Prospective Turkish teachers, Turkish education, basic skills, critical thinking, tolerance.