Thinking Styles of New Mathematics Teachers and Their Relation to Self-Esteem

Abstract

The teacher’s self-esteem affects his point of view, his thinking style, and his attitudes towards education. It also generally influences the teacher’s behavior during the lesson session, his relationship with students, his teaching style, and also his expectations of the students as well as the decisions that he makes in his teaching plans. It can also have a significant impact on his students in developing their thinking style, and in helping students to overcome their educational difficulties and their fear of the subject they are studying. This research aims to determine the contribution of self-esteem in forecasting thinking styles among new mathematics teachers. The significance of this study is to determine the contribution of self-esteem in forecasting thinking styles in order to draw the attention of educators and researchers when preparing teacher training programs including their syllabus and the teaching material, because it will affect their performance and their students in the future. The researcher used the quantitative method and Thinking Styles Inventory to check the contribution of self-esteem in forecasting the thinking styles of the new mathematics teachers. The researcher will also use the Self-esteem scale to check the contribution of self-esteem in forecasting the thinking styles of the new mathematics teachers. The study sample consisted of 169 participants (79 males, 90 female): new mathematics teachers in Israel. The results show that the correlation coefficients between the legislative thinking style and self-esteem were significant (1.4%). and show that the correlation coefficients between the executive thinking style and self-esteem was significant at (2.8%).