Examining the Relationship between Thinking Styles and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge of the Candidate Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

The aim of this research is measuring the technological pedagogical content knowledge of the candidate elementary mathematics teachers, identifying the thinking styles of the same candidates and finding out that whether there is a correlation or not. The research has the characteristics of a basic research to add new information to the scientific literature by examining the correlation. The study was carried out on 288 students from the Elementary Mathematics Teaching Department of the Education Faculty of Selcuk University at 2010-2011 academic years. As data collection tool, “Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Scale” was used for technological pedagogical content knowledge and “Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles Scale” was used for thinking styles. The SPSS program is used for the data analysis that gathered from the scales. According to the findings obtained at the end of the study; judicial, liberal and hierarchic thinking styles has a meaningful relationship with the sub-dimensions of technological pedagogical content knowledge according to the other thinking styles.