Themes of Reflective Thinking as a Predictor of Physical Education and Sport Pre-Service Teachers’ the Entrepreneurial Characteristics

Abstract

Today, entrepreneurship has gained great importance, especially with the transition from industrial society to information society. Therefore, in order to ensure economic and social development of societies, entrepreneurship must comprehensively be supported, encouraged and entrepreneurship education has to be provided. Many similar qualities and skills among individuals having reflective thinking abilities and entrepreneurial individuals arise when reflective thinking, one of the higher-level thinking skills, is defined as the cognitive inquiry that will lead the individual to produce new knowledge and develop alternative ways. The purpose of this research is to identify whether physical education and sports teachers' reflective thinking themes predict entrepreneurial characteristics. Research is designed in accordance with the relational screening model. Semerci (2007), “Reflective Thinking Tendency Scale” and Yilmaz and Sunbul (2009), “Entrepreneurship Scale for University Students” were used as data collection tool. Multilevel regression analysis was benefitted in the analyze of the data.  As a result of this research, it is determined that effective and interrogated teaching sub-dimension was the most independent variable contributing to the entrepreneurial characteristics of physical education and sports pre-service teachers and this was followed by continuous and intentional thinking, responsibility of teaching and science and looking professional sub-dimensions. It has also been determined that sub-dimensions such as open-mindedness, foresighted and sincere and researcher do not make a meaningful contribution to the prediction of entrepreneurial characteristics. Based on these results, it can be said that a pre-service teacher with high entrepreneurial characteristics will have higher reflective thinking tendencies. Besides, it is also possible to analyze how thinking skills such as critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving and supra-cognitive thinking predict entrepreneurial characteristics.