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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of religion on prospective early childhood teachers’ judgments of fact and reasoning. Six hundred and sixteen prospective early childhood teachers from seven different cities and universities in Turkey participated in the study. Participants read the religious story of ‘King Solomon and the Ant’ and responded to the following questions: (1) Can Solomon converse with ants? (2) If yes, why, or no, why not? Please explain your answer with one sentence. Findings revealed that 520 of the participants (84%) responded to the first question affirmatively and 96 (16%) of the participants responded negatively. Among positive responders, 494 (80%) provided religious reasoning, while 83 (13.5%) laid out natural reasoning; 29 (4.7%) resorted to literary reasoning; and 10 (1.6%) offered uninformative explanations for their responses. Analysis revealed that participants’ responses did not differ by their class level at the university. Recommendations are provided for the relevance of these findings for teacher education.