The Investigation of Variables Predicting Prospective Teachers' Problem Solving Skills

The solution of the problem described by John Dewey as all the events that create dilemmas in the human mind is influenced by several factors in various situations. Problem-solving skills conceptualized in a complex process involving cognitive, affective, and behavioral activities and conceived as a view of the individual's mental abilities are cognitive such as critical and creative thinking, affective such as epistemological and self-efficacy beliefs and motivation, age representing experiences and academic achievement representing performance. Many researchers surveyed the role of problem-solving skills in the educational context, the greatest task in raising qualified problem solvers individuals. Therefore, problem-solving skills are needed for educators to be trained in order to determine the level of problem-solving skills and the factors by which these skills are influenced, as teacher trainees are critical to bringing those skills to their students. The basic aim of current study was to determine how did cognitive, affective and behavioral elements such as creative thinking, critical thinking, epistemological beliefs, motivation, academic achievement, self-efficacy beliefs and age affect and predict prospective teachers' problem solving skills. It was also aimed to determine the significant change of participants' problem-solving skills according to gender, class level and department type. This research was conduct with a total of 471 prospective teachers (372, Female, 99, Male) in five different departments of the education faculty of a foundation university in Istanbul. In the data collection process, it was directed that problem-solving skills assessment booklet containing six different data collection tools along with an interpersonal problem-solving inventory. In this study, which is based on the relational survey model, the collected data to answer the research questions were analyzed with SPSS 20.0 which is a helper packet program for statistical analysis. The research questions were tried to be answered through Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, t-test, one way Anova and regression analysis. As a result, it was determined that the prospective teachers' had a below of moderate level of problem solving skills and showed a significant difference only at the grade level. It was also found that the most powerful and meaningful predictors of prospective teachers' problem-solving skills are critical thinking, epistemological beliefs and creative thinking. In summary, the results obtained in this study were discussed in the light of relevant