Analysis on Professional Maturity Levels of Secondary School Students According to Their Ruminative Thinking Skills

Abstract

Ruminative thinking, which could be defined as the domination of mind by negative thoughts, is mainly the most intensive way of thinking "I wish I had done it in that way" in an individual's mind. Individuals experience serious complexities in their worlds of feelings and thoughts during their secondary level education years, where they are also expected to make successful decisions about their future professions. Therefore, it is important to determine whether secondary schools students possess the thinking skills and professional maturity required to decide on their future professions before they make this decision. In the light of this thought, this study focused on the analysis of secondary school students' levels of ruminative thinking and professional maturity. The sampling consisted of 565 secondary school students. The data were collected through "The Scale of Ruminative Thinking Pattern" (alpha=0.907) developed by Brinker and Dozois (2009), which was adapted to Turkish by Karatepe (2010) along with the "Professional maturity Scale" (alpha=0.89) developed by Kuzgun and Bacanli (1991). (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.