What does Critical Thinking mean? A statistical data analysis of pre-service teachers’ defining statements
Sofia D. Anastasiadou, Aikaterini Dimitriadou

Abstract
Critical thinking development is an essential part of undergraduate education, but are we certain that pre-service teachers can define the concept of CT in order to pursue it later in the classroom? Based on the conviction that CT can be learned, developed and improved, this paper refers to an empirical research aiming to determine the way in which 88 third semester student teachers of the University of Western Macedonia, Greece, conceive the notion of CT. The participants‟ defining statements of the term are mainly concerned with metacognition, approach and utilization of knowledge as well as cognitive processes based on logic, thus forming categories in approximate analogy to those of Sternberg‟s model of human intelligence; however, the implementation of implicative statistical analysis reveals a differentiation from this model. The results of the study have implications for the pedagogy of CT and the pre-service teachers‟ epistemological development.

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