Critical thinking skills of preservice teachers in the blended learning environment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of blended learning environment which supports the course management system on the critical thinking skills of students. The model of the study is pretest, posttest single group model.  There are 44 Preservice Teachers who attending the course of Design And Use Of Instructional Material in the Department of Computer and Instructional Technology Education of Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University in third grade who constitute the study group. In this study, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test, which consists of 100 items, was used to collect data. The test was developed in 1964 by Watson and Glaser. The test was translated into Turkish by Demirtaşlı-Çıkrıkçı in 1996. Analysis results indicated that the ranges of internal consistency of the subscales are interval from .20 to .47 and the total correlation coefficient is .63. The course consists of 5 weeks. At the beginning of the semester, preservice teachers’ WGCTA scores were obtained. In the environment of blended learning, the course is supported to chat rooms and forums. After 5 weeks, preservice teachers were asked to do the test again and the critical skills of the students were examined. The data was analyzed through paired sample t-test to compare the results of pretest posttest scores, as well as descriptive statistics. There was no significant difference between pretets and posttest results.