Abstract:

Understanding how people interact on social networks and what influences their decisions to share content or follow accounts is crucial. Researches indicate that knowing one’s own personality can predict various personal, social and academic life aspects and social media behaviour. A direct connection exists between behaviour on social media and individual personality traits, particularly critical thinking and the Big 5 traits could be related to social media usage intentions and behavioural tendencies.

This study aims to explore the connection between initial teachers' personality dimensions and their application of critical thinking abilities on social media. The research questions seek to answer the issues:
- How are initial teachers' personality traits related to their critical thinking abilities?
- How ddo we tend to act on social media? Are there any significant differences between students‘ involved in the project activities of critical thinking and media literacy and not involved in the project initial teachers?

A quantitative research methodology was applied using an online survey (the Big Five personality dimensions scale was used to identify personality traits, consisting of 25 pairs of adjectives across five subscales and a Critical Thinking Abilities scale was designed for pre-service teachers to evaluate their critical thinking performance on social media). Purposive sampling was used and 218 pre-service teachers from one training centre completed the survey, where 41 students out of 218 respondents participated in the flipped classroom activities of the project. This research was conducted in collaboration with partners from Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania as part of the Erasmus+ KA220-HED Cooperation partnerships in higher education project “Critical Thinking in the Information Society” (CTIS), which overall object is to stimulate innovative learning and teaching practices by elaborating digital educational materials intended to develop advanced transversal skills of critical thinking and media literacy in higher education students (https://ctis-erasmus.info/).

The study and statistical data analysis highlighted the dominant personality traits of pre-service teachers and how these traits could be connected with critical thinking abilities used in social media. Extroverted personalities demonstrate better critical thinking abilities across all identified skill groups: critical analysis and information evaluation, logical thinking and information justification, information reliability assessment, and argumentation. Pre-service teachers with pronounced conscientiousness traits are more capable of assessing the reliability of information and providing evidence based arguments when interpreting social media content. A correlation was found between the agreeableness traits of pre-service teachers and their abilities to critically analyse and evaluate information on social media. Kind, helpful, and forgiving teachers demonstrate better abilities to assess whether people have the facts right and to identify misconceptions and gaps in their own reasoning.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, personality traits, pre-service teachers, social media.