The Relationship between Prospective Teachers’ Media and Television Literacy and Their Critical Thinking Dispositions

Problem Statement: Teachers play a significant role in shaping students onmedia literacy and critical thinking. Hence, prospective teachers arerequired to gain knowledge about media literacy and critical thinkingduring pre-service training. Provided that prospective teachers who willshape the next generation possess such skills as accessing to knowledge,examining knowledge with a critical perspective and discerning what isgood and what is bad, they will be able to guide students to acquire theseskills. On this subject, the present study investigated a small number ofstudies that examine the relationship between media literacy and criticalthinking.Purpose of the Study: The aim of the present study is to analyze therelationship between prospective teachers’ media and television literacylevels and their critical thinking dispositions.Method: The research used relational screening models. The sample of theresearch consisted of 166 prospective teachers studying teacher trainingcourse at one of Turkey’s state universities. The study’s research analysisutilized descriptive statistics, MANOVA and Pearson product-momentcorrelation.Findings and Results: The current study found that critical thinkingdispositions as well as their media and television literacy differ significantlydepending on their gender and major. A medium level positive relationshipwas revealed between prospective teachers’ general critical thinkingdisposition scores and the media and television literacy scale literacy subdimension,while there is a low level positive relationship exists betweencritical thinking and the addiction sub-dimension. Recommendations: Based on the study’s findings, the following recommendations are provided: given prospective teachers’ low critical thinking disposition scores, it is important that higher education curricula be designed for the development of critical thinking skills; moreover, various measures should be taken that aim to provide the appropriate equipment and psychological environment to develop these skills. The present study determined that there is a medium level positive relationship between prospective teachers’ general critical thinking disposition scores and the media and television literacy scale literacy sub-dimension; this relationship between media literacy and critical thinking can be further investigated through different sample groups and different measurement tools.Keywords: Prospective teachers, thinking, critical thinking, media and television literacy