Stereotyped Thoughts of Teacher Candidates Towards Science Courses: Sample of Turkey

Abstract

Thoughts that direct individuals’ feelings and behaviors within certain non-functional patterns are called stereotyped thoughts. Stereotypes can be positive or negative and it is thought that individuals’ stereotyped thoughts towards a phenomenon would affect the other individuals with whom they interact. Based on the idea that student and teacher interaction has a critical importance on academic achievement, the study aims to examine the stereotyped thoughts of teacher candidates' towards science courses on the basis of their gender, academic achievements and the department they are studying. The study group consists of 1627 teacher candidates from seven universities in Turkey. As a data collection tool, the "Stereotypical Thought Scale for Science Lessons" developed by Demirci Güler and Irmak (2020) was used. It is seen that the qualitative value range of teacher candidates' stereotyped thoughts towards science is “indecisive” with 3.18. It has been found that teacher candidates' stereotyped thoughts about science courses differ according to their gender and department they study at, but not according to their academic achievement scores.

Keywords

• : Science course
• stereotyped thought
• teacher candidates
• : Science course, stereotyped thought, teacher candidates