The Relationship between Teacher Candidates' Learning Styles and Critical Thinking Dispositions (An Investigation on the Students in Faculty of Education in Anadolu University)

Information society intends on training individuals in a way that they know how, why, what they learn instead of those accepting available information without questioning. These aims requirement of information society highlight the concepts of learning style and critical thinking that explain individuals' learning styles and involve thinking skills based on questioning. This study was carried out on 251 students studying at Anadolu University, Education Faculty between 2003-2004 spring term so as to determine the relationship between the learning styles and critical thinking dispositions that the teacher candidates have. According to the results of the study, a certain degree of relationship was found to be between the learning styles and critical thinking dispositions that teacher SUMMARY Purpose and significance: The general purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the learning styles and critical thinking dispositions of teacher candidates at Faculty of Education, Anadolu University. Both learning and thinking are the concepts which support and complete one another. When considered from this point of view, whereas learning style and critical thinking concepts have different qualifications, it can be stated that they can be used jointly. Likewise, when literature is examined, it is seen that there are researches handling learning styles and critical thinking concepts jointly. Methods: In this study singular and relational scanning models were employed. For the research, 278 students from 11 different programs at Anadolu University, Education Faculty served as the sample. The data were gathered by means of the instrument which consists of two parts as "Kolb Learning Style Inventory (1985)" and California Critical Thinking Disposition Scale (1992) developed by Facione and Facione and adapted to Turkish by Kokdemir. Results: In the study, majority of the students were found to have assimilator and converger learning styles. The critical thinking dispositions of the teachers candidate were generally found to be at lower levels. However, when we examine the scale of critical thinking dispositions, the analytic dispositions of the teacher candidates were found to be at higher levels and the curiosity dispositions of the teacher candidates were found to be between low and high, and the rest of the dispositions were found to be at lower levels. It was found in the study that there has been a certain degree of relationship between the critical thinking dispositions and learning styles of teacher candidates. Depending on this, the teacher candidates who have converger learning styles have higher curiosity dispositions compared to the students having diverger learning styles, and the students having converger learning styles have higher self confidence dispositions compared to the students having diverger and accommodator learning styles. Discussion and Conclusions: It was found that there has been a relationship between the learning styles and critical thinking dispositions of teacher candidates. However, this relationship is true only for a certain number of learning styles and critical thinking dispositions rather than all of the learning styles or critical thinking dispositions. This study should also be carried out on different education levels or on the similar education levels. In the future studies which will be carried out, the scale which determined the critical thinking dispositions and the inventory used to determine the learning styles in the study can be used as the instruments as well as the instruments which have been already developed or which will be developed for the same purpose.