A Study on Scientific Thinking Skills and Professional Experience of Teachers

Abstract

Scientific thinking is considered as a cognitive process in which the underlying causes of a basic problem are solved. It is of great importance for teachers to have scientific thinking skills to improve their professional lives, to create effective learning environments, to continuously question the events and processes in the classroom, to carry out research, to identify problems and to produce solutions. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is a significant difference between teachers' scientific thinking skills and variables such as gender, seniority and branch. The research was conducted based on the comparative descriptive survey model. The data obtained concerning the demographic characteristics of the teachers were analyzed with frequency and percentage techniques. In the analyses between the demographic characteristics of the subjects and their scientific thinking skills, arithmetic mean, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), which were selected according to the characteristics of the groups, were used. For the research, the Scientific Thinking Skills Scale developed by Göktürker (2005) was adapted into Kazakh and applied to the teachers. According to the findings of the study, the scientific thinking skills of the participant teachers were found to be at a medium level. In addition, significant differences were found in teachers' scientific thinking skills according to gender, branch and professional seniority factors.