Investigating the Relationships between Self-efficacy for Argumentation and Critical Thinking Skills

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between preservice teachers’ critical thinking skills and their self-efficacy for argumentation. The participants of the research consisted of 858 preservice teachers (447 female, 411 male) studying in education faculties at five different state universities in Turkey. In this study, the “Self-Efficacy for Argumentation Scale” (SEAS) and the “Critical Thinking Standards Scale” (CTSS) were used to gather the data. SEAS include “effort for argumentation” “confidence for argumentation,” while CTSS include “depth, breadth and sufficiency,” “precision and accuracy” and “significance, relevance and clarity.” The findings indicated that both the “effort for argumentation” and “confidence for argumentation” were significant, positive predictors of “depth-breadth-sufficiency” and “significance-relevance-clarity.” Although, the “effort for argumentation” predicted the “precision and accuracy,” it was found that the “confidence for argumentation” did not predict this dimension.

KEYWORDS:

• Argumentation
• self-efficacy
• argumentation for self-efficacy
• critical thinking
• preservice teacher

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by the Scientific Research Projects Unit of Adnan Menderes University (EĞF-18002).