Critical Thinking and Managerial Decision Making

This article provides a critical analysis of a research study on improving critical thinking skills in economic and business students. It explores the background, objectives, and findings of the study, as well as the significance of the findings. The article also evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the study and discusses its overall value in enhancing critical thinking abilities.

Critical Thinking and Managerial
Decision Making
Student’s Name:
Student’s ID:
Subject:

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Critical Analysis............................................................................................................................................2
Background of the research.....................................................................................................................2
Research objective..................................................................................................................................2
Research questions..................................................................................................................................2
Research methodology............................................................................................................................3
Major Findings.........................................................................................................................................3
The significance of the findings...............................................................................................................4
Critical Evaluation........................................................................................................................................4
Strength and weaknesses of the article.......................................................................................................4
The overall value of article..........................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................5
References...................................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
The motive of the paper is to critically analyze the background, objectives, key findings and
various questions of the research study. The significance of the findings will also be explained
for conducting future research. The main aim of the article is to develop the critical thinking
skills of the economic students as well as the students from the business department by
considering several methods and instructions. Moreover, the paper will also highlight the
strength, as well as weaknesses of the article. The overall impact or contribution of the article
will help in understanding the concepts regarding improving the critical thinking ability of the
student's. Education plays an essential role in improving critical thinking skills among the
students.
Critical Analysis
Background of the research
It has been critically analyzed that the article tries to develop the critical thinking of the higher
education students as it is an important skill for achieving success in the complex world. The
impact of diverse types of critical thinking instruction on the students is investigated by
comparing various conditions. The implicit instruction, explicit instruction, self-explanation
prompts, and practice is the condition. Education acts as a vital role in improving the critical
thinking of the students. Critical thinking skill is a significant need in the changing environment
of professionals (van de Kamp, Admiraal, van Drie & Rijlaarsdam, 2015). If a student lacks
critical thinking skills, then it may lead to severe consequences and biased reasoning. It has been
indicated that critical thinking skills generally improved when there is explicit instruction.
Critical thinking means a self-regulatory decision which results in investigation, explanation or
evaluation of the conceptual considerations based on the judgment (Heijltjes, Van Gog & Paas,
2014).
Research objective
The main objective of the research is to improve the critical thinking skills of the economic
students for dynamic environments of a profession like medicine.
It primarily focuses on the crucial factors of critical thinking as those factors play a vital role in
making decisions in complex situations in various fields.

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Research questions
The core research questions that the article addresses are as follows:
 Is rational thinking trainable? If yes, then what kind of instruction is most advantageous?
 Whether the positive effects of specific training should be combined with the
opportunities for practice?
 Whether explicit instruction enhance critical thinking in terms of impartial reasoning
when combined with practice?
 Whether self-explanation prompts at the time of practice can improve reasoning skills?
The questions are essential to address for the students and education so that they could know
how to improve their critical thinking skills in various fields (Lai & Hong, 2015). The students
could improve their performance on various tasks related to arguments. The questions are also
crucial for future research.
Research methodology
The research was conducted through various methods such as participants and design, critical
thinking disposition tests or skills tests, critical thinking instruction, and mental effort. A random
assignment of participants on various conditions was made to know the pre-test as well as a post-
test performance of critical thinking on several tasks through the variance analysis. A regression
study was used to measure the performance of the students on high score disposition (Abrami et
al., 2015). Multiple regression analysis was conducted to reveal an interaction between the
conditions of instructions and AOT scores. It also conducts mean and standard deviation for
evaluating the scores of critical thinking skills in pre-test or post-test (Buckley, Archibald,
Hargraves & Trochim, 2015). Covariance analysis was shown on practice as well as non-
practiced tasks. The method of mental effort was dignified by using a 9-point subjective rating
scale which has the range from a low effort to high effort (Al‐Zahrani, 2015).
Major Findings
One of the findings of the research is that instructions of explicit and implicit are not sufficient
separately until they are combined with practice (Firdaus, Kailani, Bakar & Bakry, 2015).
Students who receive explicit instruction express more improvements in critical thinking than the
students who receive implicit instruction. The other finding is that students who receive a
potential strategy of self-explanation prompts can reveal enhanced presentation on critical

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thinking than the students who failed to obtain prompts of self-explanation. Another finding is
that the performance of the students can be increased when they use relevant information based
on logic. The article also discovers the disposition of the student’s role in obtaining reasoning
skills as well as applying mental effort measures on exploring the instruction effects on skills
(Kivunja, 2015).
The significance of the findings
The findings are approved to be significant for future research. The future research with the help
of these findings could research in more details about explicit instruction and practice. It could
also find out that the reason for the benefits of self-explanation prompts for the performance of
the students at a higher level. The findings show the usefulness of self-explanation which
promotes the proper use of skills and knowledge (Fuad, Zubaidah, Mahanal & Suarsini, 2017). It
also helps in the promotion of learning reasoning tasks. The finding suggested that unbiased
reasoning can be improved when practice and explicit instruction combined effectively.
Critical Evaluation
It has been critically evaluated that the article gives favorable outcomes for the students to
improve critical thinking skills (Schoenherr & Speier‐Pero, 2015). It has been agreed with the
instruction provided in the article because the instruction on critical thinking reveals a strong
effect on the students to avoid biased reasoning in professional environments. For example,
during the financial markets and the banking crisis of 2008. It also agreed that the concept of
rationality is closely linked with critical thinking because thinking errors can be identified with
the help of assessing rationality. For example, the aim of education should be to raise rationality
by concentrating on the reasons based on actions and judgment (Kuldas, Hashim & Ismail,
2015). The article demonstrated biased reasoning on a variety of tasks based on reasoning which
is crucial for enhancing critical thinking skills (Hibbert & Cunliffe, 2015). It has disagreed with
the argument that inhibition training enhances reasoning performance of the participants because
biased reasoning occurs due to the failure of inhibition training. For instance, participants were
used to teach to constrain the misleading combination tasks and to initiate the appropriate
scheme (Loon, Evans & Kerridge, 2015). The measures used by the article to analyze data are
relevant as the level of significance for all the analyses was .05.

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Strength and weaknesses of the article
The strength of the article is that it provides wonderful results for instructors who desire to
improve the critical thinking skills of their students based on unbiased reasoning (Tadaki,
Brierley, Dickson, Le Heron & Salmond, 2015). It also provides instructional interventions that
are combined with practice to improve their thinking skills.
One of the weaknesses of the article is that it defines as well as measures critical thinking in
terms of reasoning skills (Howard, Tang & Austin, 2015). The second limitation is that the
instruction session is immediately followed by the post-test because it seems unclear that explicit
instruction has long-lasting effects.
The overall value of the article
From my point of view, the article has contributed a lot of sources and instructions for enhancing
the thinking abilities of the students of higher education. It has a substantial impact on enhancing
critical thinking of the economic students as well as business students to avoid unbiased
reasoning. The article suggests that by combining explicit instruction with practice, the students
could learn to avoid reasoning biases. An experimental intervention which has a duration of 15-
minute instruction and 20 minutes of practice for the reasoning tasks was provided as a useful
outcome. The article provides empirical support to explicit instruction.
Conclusion
It has been concluded from the topic as mentioned above that the main focus of the article was to
increase the thinking abilities of the students who are in higher education as those students had
poor critical thinking strategies. The explicit instruction combined with practice improved the
students’ critical thinking quickly and easily. The core research questions addressed in the article
helped the future research in their findings. It reveals the effectiveness of self-explanation
prompts which helps in promoting the use of critical thinking as well as reasoning skills. A
regression analysis and covariance analysis was used to conduct the research.

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References
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(2015). Strategies for teaching students to think critically: A meta-analysis. Review of
Educational Research, 85(2), 275-314.
Al‐Zahrani, A. M. (2015). From passive to active: The impact of the flipped classroom through
social learning platforms on higher education students' creative thinking. British Journal
of Educational Technology, 46(6), 1133-1148.
Buckley, J., Archibald, T., Hargraves, M., & Trochim, W. M. (2015). Defining and teaching
evaluative thinking: Insights from research on critical thinking. American Journal of
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Firdaus, F., Kailani, I., Bakar, M. N. B., & Bakry, B. (2015). Developing critical thinking skills
of students in mathematics learning. Journal of Education and Learning, 9(3), 226-236.
Fuad, N. M., Zubaidah, S., Mahanal, S., & Suarsini, E. (2017). Improving Junior High Schools'
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Hibbert, P., & Cunliffe, A. (2015). Responsible management: Engaging moral reflexive practice
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motivation, intervention, and the Pygmalion effect. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1),
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Kivunja, C. (2015). Teaching students to learn and to work well with 21st-century skills:
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Journal of Higher Education, 4(1), 1-11.

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Kuldas, S., Hashim, S., & Ismail, H. N. (2015). Malaysian adolescent students' needs for
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