The relationship between the attitudes of mathematics teacher candidates towards scientific research and their thinking styles

Abstract

The aim of this research is to determine the attitudes of mathematics teacher candidates towards scientific research and their thinking style and whether there is a significant relationship between these two. The sample of the research is constituted of 83 second year students studying at the Mathematics Education Department, Ahmet Keleşoğlu Education Faculty, Necmettin Erbakan University in the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic years. The relational screening model was used in the analysis of the data. The 'Thinking Styles Scale' developed by Sternberg and Wagner [47] and adapted to Turkish by Buluş [8], and the 'Attitude Scale towards Scientific Research' developed by Korkmaz, Şahin and Yeşil [31] were used as data collection tools in the research. Research findings show that there is no significant relationship between the thinking styles of the teacher candidates and their attitudes towards scientific research. It was found that the highest relationship was between positive attitudes toward research and open-minded (liberal) thinking styles.