At the present time, there is a need for creative individuals who are interrogators and especially for those who put forward new and original ideas and products and who can think in different ways from others. The fact that the solutions used in the past will possibly fail to solve future problems demonstrates the need for creative and critical thinkers (Torrance, 1965). However, with the education given in schools, there are now individuals who do not demonstrate top-level thinking skills but are successful in memorizing great amounts of information yet who do not how to make use of their knowledge (Eriç, 1998). Individuals’ lack of an educational understanding which will help them express themselves freely and which will allow them to put forward creative products and ideas by using their critical perspectives will lead to a negative effect not only on their own development as an individual but on the development of the society as well. The reason is that democracies need individuals who can think flexibly and produce solutions. In addition, culture demonstrates permanence depending on the creativity of societies. In order to put forward a solution on intellectual basis, it is important to help individuals not only acquire the habit of methodological thinking but also try to find different ways of transferring information. One way to achieve this is to provide education on participatory top-level thinking (Koray, 2003).

It is well known in education that there are a number of special factors influential on learning. Some of these factors are interest, motivation, attitude, self-confidence and self-efficacy (Alsop, 2003; Randel, Stevenson and Witruk, 2000). Studies show that teachers who have self-confidence regarding their teaching skills and who have high levels of expectations of success from their students spend more time preparing for their lessons, demonstrate more positive attitudes towards teaching and have a higher tendency to use technology and other renovations in their lessons (Albion, 1999; Ginns, Tulip, Waters and Lucas, 1995; Tosun, 2000). In this respect, self-efficacy belief is one of the important points that should draw special attention (Pajares, 1996).

From this point of view, the purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of science and technology laboratory applications based on critical and creative thinking on elementary school teachers’ self-efficacy perceptions and their attitudes towards science.

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