The effect of creative and critical thinking based laboratory applications on creative and logical thinking abilities of prospective teachers

It is a clear fact that the laboratory method is one of the most important teaching methods for providing effective and meaningful learning in science education. It is the foundation for scientific and technological development. The laboratory method that is based on students’ active participation in the process of data collection and analysis of the facts can provide students an understanding of the nature and ways of science. In addition, it can also provide students opportunities to improve their problem solving and investigation skills, to do appropriate generalization about important points in science, to get scientific knowledge and to hold positive attitudes towards science (Tamir, 1997). Integration critical and creative thinking processes with the laboratory method, which is one of the most important methods in effective science education, may contribute to science content learning and logical thinking on scientific issues. Jackson (2000) showed requirement and importance of critical thinking in development of problem solving ability. In addition to problem solving, Koray et al. (2007) presented the effectiveness of creativity and critical thinking based applications on science process skills. The laboratory method frequently requires usage of problem solving and science process skills and is mainly based on experiments. Therefore, it includes the examining of events, processes and facts in nature using experimental studies. When the descriptions of creative and critical thinking concepts are taken into consideration, it can easily be seen that activities about creative and critical thinking abilities should be part of the laboratory method in order to explain and study the structure of natural events, which are complex, open-ended and multifaceted. Again, the research method used in the study, the experimental method, is only way to construct a cause-effect relationship that might provide important knowledge about practical importance of the applications. In this study, it was hypothesized that critical and creative thinking based activities are effective on the development of logical thinking and creative thinking. The effect of applications on creative thinking was thought to be a direct influence, while the effect of applications on logical thinking was thought to be mediated by the effectiveness of the applications on problem solving and science process skills, which are tools of logical thinking ability. With all these considerations, the aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of creative and critical thinking based laboratory applications on creative and logical thinking abilities of prospective teachers.