The purpose of this study is to figure out accuratecritical thinking level of students by determining whether students are well-cultivated critical thinkers, have alternative systems of thoughts,are able to come to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions.The research was conducted by sampling 3 rd grade students of fall semester in 2014-2015 academic year studying at Departments of PSE-6-rimary Teaching, Social Studies Teaching, Science Teaching, Preschool Teaching and Mathematics Teaching of

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... ucation Faculty of Pamukkale University.By considering equal number of students in each departments, the study was realized through 100 students voluntarily participated in the study. Developed by Faciona and Faciona, Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric was used to determine critical thinking skills and levels of students. To analyze data, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed.In the Rubric, students were asked to write an essay on a practice put into effect in primary schools in Turkey. Students' critical thinking skills were analyzed with respect to gender and department variables.Quantitative data were analyzed through SPSS .22 and content analysis were utilizedto analyze qualitative data. According to research result, whereas department variable of candidate teachers did not affect critical thinking skills, gender variable were significantly different and in favor of female students. Findings demonstrated that 54 percent of candidate teachers were in the firstlevel of six level rubric scales using their critical thinking.