Reflective Thinking Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study.

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to adapt Reflective Thinking Scale to Turkish and investigate its validity and reliability over a Turkish university students' sample. Reflective Thinking Scale (RTS) is a 5 point Likert scale (ranging from 1 corresponding Agree Completely, 3 to Neutral, and 5 to Not Agree Completely), purposed to measure reflective thinking in habitual actions, understanding, reflecting and critical reflecting subscale levels. With the help of education area and language experts, the scale adaptation thoroughly completed and the correlation between the original scale and its Turkish form indicated satisfactory language equality (r=.80). During the 2011-2012 school years, 1413 undergraduate students, from varying departments of Faculty of Education, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart and Gaziosmanpasa University, were participated in this study. In order to maximize student participation, convenient sampling method was followed. After the item analysis, internal consistency of the scale and subscale items were checked through Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient and Spearman Brown Split-Half correlation coefficient and both indicated good internal consistency on the scale and the subscale levels. The scale also demonstrated sufficient test-retest reliability over the application of the scale in two weeks and two months intervals. The construct validity is established through a confirmatory and an exploratory factor analyses and the four factor structure, suggested in the original study, was confirmed by both analyses. The concurrent validity was also confirmed through the scale's satisfactory Pearson correlation coefficient with Critical Thinking Scale.Key WordsReflective Thinking, Critical Thinking, Reflective Thinking Scale, Validity, ReliabilityProducing reflective thinkers is one of the main goals of a constructivist approach to education and also one of the primary objectives of Dewey's pragmatism. Dewey (1933) described reflective thinking as active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends. He also stated that reflective thinking adds meaning to the experience through its reorganization and reconstruction and leads the way for further goals requiring more comprehensive tasks. Reflective thinking requires the learner to achieve the learning goals and turn into the behavior. Later, learner evaluates his/her own performance and has a perception of the progress he/she made, makes a discussion about the product, this way it will be possible to benefit from that experience for the future occurrences. A deed can be counted as successful to the extent that its doer reflects his/her education towards life experiences. For this purpose, a teacher needs to promote students through helping them with homework assignments and demonstrations. Pollard (2002) emphasized that teacher reflection has become increasingly important for classroom practitioners, and both Tripp (2003) and Pollard stated that reflective thinking is a cyclic process. According to Ennis (1987), reflective thinking is a component of the critical thinking process. Tan and Goh (2008) stated that reflection links the past, the present, and/or the future.Kember and his colleagues (Kember et al., 2000; Kember, McKay, Sinclair, & Frances, 2008) explained reflective thinking in four dimensions as Habitual Action, Understanding, Reflection, and Critical Reflection. They also concluded that this classification can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of students' writings, compositions, dairies, and their answers to open ended questions to reflective thinking.Habitual Actions: These are the actions, learned before and mastered through frequent use and started to be performed automatically. Using a keyboard, riding a bike, driving a car can be given as examples of this level. …