Development Level of Pedagogical Students' Inductive Thinking in the 21th Century

Abstract

The international literature on the examination of inductive reasoning is rather rich. Approaching it from the direction of soft skills can be considered still novel. The main objectives were to draw a picture of the development level of first-grade teacher students’ inductive thinking, to analyse the time used for the solution of tasks and task items and finally to explore the interconnection between solution time and the performance achieved in the inductive test. According to the results of 204 students attending teacher training at J. Selye University in Slovakia, the abstract and analogue reasoning of these students is of medium development level, while their diagrammatic thinking is weaker. There is a connection between the time used for the items and the test results, both the task types and the students can be classified according to time consumption. The 10% having reached the best results are women, have parents with a degree, live in cities and took their secondary school leaving exams at secondary grammar schools Hungary. Female and correspondence students spent more time on solving the tasks than male and full-time students.