In connection with the increasing attention to the teachers' research activities worldwide (J.Kincheloe [2], M. MacLean, M.Mohr [3], A.Clarke, J. Erickson [1; 44-48] and others), the development of such type of high order thinking as research thinking becomes relevant. In Russia, this is primarily expressed by the fact that, according to the higher education federal state standard, one of the areas of the training programs 44.03.01 (four year training) [10], and 44.03.05 (five year training) [11] Pedagogical education (bachelors) is their focus on the research type of activity. In this regard, the determination of the levels of students' research thinking development can be considered as one of the conditions conducive of its effective implementation.

The difficulty in determining the levels of future teachers’ research thinking development is due to insufficient knowledge of the essence of the concept of “research thinking” both in Russia and abroad. In foreign literature, the concept of “research thinking” has many equivalents: “research thinking” (N. Peim [5]); “research-based thinking” (T.Silander, J. Valijarvi [7; 85-86]); “inquiry thinking”, “investigative thinking” (K.Murdoch [4]); “exploratory thinking” (R. Taylor [8]). This determines the difficulty of developing a methodology for assessing the levels of development of research thinking and indicates the presence of such a contradiction as the need for the development of research thinking and the absence of methods for its diagnosis, which allows formulating the study’s purpose as developing a methodology for determining the levels of future teachers’ research thinking development.

Determining the levels of future teachers' research thinking development will help to individualize the classes’ content and teaching methods, since the teacher will know within what limits the level of students' research thinking development is located. The teacher will be able to plan in advance the most appropriate types of educational work and develop tasks that contribute to the students' research thinking development. The application of the diagnostic approach in future teachers’ training will allow teachers evaluate their activities more objectively. This, in turn, will contribute to the realization of such important didactic condition of future teachers' research thinking development as teachers' themselves high level of research thinking development.

To achieve the goal, the following methods of scientific and pedagogical research were used: methods of theoretical research: psychological and pedagogical literature analysis, comparative analysis.

The literature analysis (H.Gardner [18], A.Z. Zak [17; 8-10], V.V. Davydov [9], A.Kh. Kasymzhanova, A.Zh. Kelbuganova [13], Yu.V. Senko [16; 72-75], etc.) showed that a system of gradually complicated research tasks can be used as a methodology for determining the levels of future teachers’ research thinking development. Their implementation contributes to the formation of students' skills to carry out a multifaceted analysis of the problem on the basis of the integration of new and existing knowledge. On the one hand, this allows research thinking development, and on the other hand, it makes it possible to use research tasks as a tool for diagnosing the levels of students' research thinking development.

Based on various approaches to studying the levels of problematic tasks proposed by M.I. Makhmutov [15], A.V. Furman [12; 43-53], and others, it is advisable to distinguish four levels of difficulty of tasks.

Based on this, methodology for determining the levels of future teachers’ (bachelors) research thinking development consists of four blocks of 5 tasks in each of them based on the content of such academic disciplines as “Design and implementation of teaching processes”, “Design and implementation of educational processes” and “Research activity in education”.

Such tasks performing will help to determine the levels of students’ research thinking development: a critically low level, a critical (moderate) level, an optimal level, and a metacognitive (high) level.

The methodological basis for determining the levels of future teachers' research thinking development can be considered a system of tasks of a research nature. According to V.V. Davydov [9], the mental activity of an individual is more productive and logical, the more fully and more deeply he has appropriated the general categories of thinking. By this we mean that in the learning process there is a mastery of the ways in which this knowledge is developed (mastery of the methods of cognition and ways of thinking). A.Z. Zach [17] holds the same opinion. He believes that the thinking development assessment includes the formulation of the principles of construction and development of tasks, the organization of students’ survey and the task results' processing. He also notes that students master the methods of thinking aimed at solving cognitive problems in the learning process. Accordingly, “it is possible to determine the level of thinking development from the point of view of what methods of solving cognitive problems and to what extent they are mastered by students”. It should be noted and the experience of Yu.V. Senko [16], who, in the process of forming students’ scientific style of thinking, resorted to a qualitative analysis of their answers, on the basis of which he identified several levels of scientific style of thinking formation. Therefore, it can be assumed that determining the levels of future teachers’ research thinking development as well as among schoolchildren is possible by evaluating the results of performing by students specially designed tasks. In our case, such tasks may be tasks of the research nature. According to I.Ya. Lerner [14], J.P. Ponte [6; 9-15] etc. the feature of research tasks is the problem presence, which solution requires the research completion. This gives the right to use research tasks to determine the levels of students’ research thinking development. However, research tasks alone will not contribute to objective determination of the levels of research thinking development, since not all students are able to perform them at a high level of complexity. Consequently it is necessary to pay attention to the problematicity levels that have been studied by various scientists (M.I. Makhmutov, A.V. Furman, and etc.). The tasks’ content at each level should be built logically from simple to complex, from reproductive to research nature. It should be emphasized that according to A.Z. Zak [17], tasks should have different formulations, because students perceive them differently.

It makes possible to single out four levels of tasks’ complexity, which implementation will, accordingly, determine the levels of students’ research thinking development. Tasks of the first level of complexity should have reproductive nature and require the application of knowledge from one subject area. They should not be of a research nature (tests, tasks to indicate a missing word, etc.). Tasks of the second level of complexity: the difficulty degree should be associated with the number and heterogeneity of elements that need to be coordinated (tasks for comparison, establishing a logical sequence, classification by groups, etc.). Tasks of the third level of complexity, in contrast to the previous blocks, require students to use interdisciplinary knowledge (isolating parts of the whole, identifying the relationships between them, understanding the principles of organizing the whole and identifying cause-effect relationships, etc.). Tasks of the fourth level of complexity are research tasks, which implementation requires students to search (complex tasks, which fulfillment is associated with students’ creative and research activities, expressed in identifying causal relationships, in establishing patterns, identifying contradictions, setting goals and objectives, in-depth analysis of the subjects’ phenomena, etc.). Levels of development of future teachers’ research thinking: critically low level (students lack research skills, research culture is not formed); critical (moderate) level (students are distinguished by their diligence, know how to see the problem, but they can hardly establish causal relationships, it is difficult for them to correlate their own conclusions with existing or newly obtained data); optimal level (students do not show a tendency to independently search for ways to increase the educational process effectiveness, but are able to engage in research activities according to the pattern); high level (students understand the research activity’s importance not only in its pure form, but also in solving difficult situations in the learning process).

1. Clarke, A. Erickson, J. (2006). Teacher inquiry: What is old is new again! BC Educational Leadership Researc. 1, P. 44–68. 2. Kincheloe, J. (2003). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, p. 296. 3. MacLean, M., Mohr, M. (1999). Teachers researchers at work. Berkeley, Ca: National Writing Project, p. 290. 4. Murdoch, K. (2015). How do inquiry teachers….teach? https://justwonderingblog.com/ [25.07.2015]. 5. Peim, N. (2018). Thinking in Education Research: Applying Philosophy and Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 296. 6. Ponte, J. P., Mata-Pereira, J., Henriques, A. C., & Quaresma, M. (2013). Designing and using exploratory tasks. In C. Margolinas (Ed.), Task design in mathematics education: Proceedings of ICMI Study 22 (pp. 9 – 15). (Vol. 1). Oxford. 7. Silander, Т., Valijarvi, J. (2013). The Theory and Practice of Building Pedagogical Skill in Finnish Teacher Education. PISA, Power, and Policy: the emergence of global educational governance Heinz-Dieter Meyer, Aaron Benavot Symposium Books Ltd. P. 85-86. 8. Taylor, R. (2013). Creativity at Work: Supercharge Your Brain and Make Your Ideas Stick. Кogan Page Publishers. p. 208. 9. Davydov, V.V. (2000). Vidy obobshcheniya v obuchenii: logiko-psikhologicheskiye problemy postroyeniya uchebnykh predmetov. [Types of generalization in training: logical and psychological problems of building educational subjects]. M.: Pedagnogicheskoye soobshchestvo Rossii. P. 379. 10. Federal State Educational Standard of higher education – Bachelor in the direction of training 44.03.01 Pedagogical Education (2018). February 22, No. 121. M: Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. 11. Federal State Educational Standard of higher education – Bachelor in the direction of training 44.03.05 Pedagogical Education (with two specializations) (2018). February 22, No. 125. M: Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. 12. Furman, A.V. (1989). Urovni resheniya problemnykh zadach uchashchimisya. [Levels of solving problem problems by students]. Voprosy psikhologii. № 3. P. 43-53. 13. Kasymzhanov, A.Kh., Kel'buganov, A.Zh. (1981). O klu'ture myshleniya. [About thinking culture]. M: Polizdat. p. 128. 14. Lerner, I.YA. (1974). Problemnoye obucheniye. [Problematic training] M.: Znaniye. p.64. 15. Makhmutov, M.I. (1975). Problemnoye obucheniye. Osnovnyye voprosy teorii. [Problematic training. The main issues of the theory]. M.:Pedagogika. p.258. 16. Sen'ko, Yu.V. (1986). Formirovaniye nauchnogo stilya myshleniya uchashchikhsya. [Students' scientific thinking formation]. M.:Znaniye. P. 72-75. 17. Zak, A.Z. (1982). Kak opredelit' uroven' razvitiya myshleniya shkol'nika [How determine the level of development of the student’s thinking]. M.: Znaniye. P. 8-10. 18. Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple intelligence. Basic Books. NY.p 300.