Critical Thinking and Self-Leadership Article Review Analysis

This report is an article review of "Relations Between Self-Leadership And Critical Thinking Skills" by Ay, Karakaya, & Yilmaz (2015), submitted for MGMT 20135 at CQUniversity. The review evaluates the research, focusing on its strengths and weaknesses. The article explores the relationship between self-leadership and critical thinking skills in university students, examining cognitive dimensions such as self-efficacy and meaningfulness. The review highlights the research methodology, including the survey design and statistical analysis. It also analyzes the findings, which indicate a moderate correlation between self-leadership and critical thinking, and discusses the implications of the research for student leadership development. The review also identifies the limitations of the research, such as the lack of a clear research question and the omission of research philosophy. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of the research in understanding the role of self-leadership in fostering critical thinking skills among students, which are vital for their future success in organizations. The review also references several other articles to support the arguments.

Running Head: CRITICAL THINKING
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Name of the Student:
Name of University:
Author Note:

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Leadership is considered to be one of the important aspect in the international platform
where the role of the leaders or the individuals is definitely assimilated with his or her
anticipation of scenario. In other words, Epitropaki, Mueller and Lord (2018) articulated that it is
pertinent for the leaders to have a vision or farsightedness in order to perceive the risk factors
proactively and resolve the issues in a preconceive manner. As a result of that Javed et al. (2018)
pointed out the close relationship between leadership skills and the creative thinking practice. In
fact, there are some serious argument made by Zacher and Johnson (2015) that marked the
critical thinking practice as one of the significant quotients that symbolised the skills and
efficacy of the current day leaders. Based on this understanding, the research of Ay, Karakaya &
Yilmaz (2015) tried to make a relation between self-leadership and critical thinking skills in the
context of the students. In this regard, this essay intends to evaluate the research and willing to
find out the strengths and weaknesses of the research.
Major emphasis of the research was vested on the personal empowerment where the
personal capabilities and initiatives are considered to be the most important part for a leader.
There are some cognitive dimensions that are responsible to create a proper process for the
individuals to initiate the development extensively (Ay, Karakaya & Yilmaz, 2015). The
cognitive dimensions are self-efficacy, meaningfulness, self-determination and personal impact.
It is essential for the leaders to take adequate focus on those elements in order to develop their
self-abilities to become a good leader. However, success in life is also influenced by the critical
thinking practice and also enhance the decision making and rationality of a person. It is also
associated with the senior university students as the critical thinking practice and self-leadership
building abilities help them to achieve their goals effectively.

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The objectives are intricately attached with the purpose of this research. Ay, Karakaya
and Yilmaz (2015) pointed out that the research objectives were the foundation steps or guidance
that led the research to get the desired outcome. In this regard, stick to the research aim or
purpose is also an essential part in order to create relevant research objectives. In this research,
the aims and the objectives are intricately supported each other. For instance, the scope or aim of
this research is to determine the relationship between self-leadership and the critical thinking
skills. Therefore, the research objectives are associated with the identification of student’s
leadership thinking skills level, correlating the self-leadership and the critical thinking practice
and evaluating both the elements through the sub-dimensions. There was no specific research
question that this research was mentioned. According to Doody and Bailey (2016) the research
objectives are the clear indication of the research questions. However, in most of the research,
the researchers clearly point out the research objectives and the research question so that the
findings and analysis part will keep a balance and affinity with the research topic. However, in
this research, the research did not mention any research question.
The methodology of this research paper has some specific information regarding the way
the data collection and the research findings will be staged. As Wolgemuth et al. (2015) opined
that the role of the research methodology is to set proper steps so that research analysis and
findings will get a guideline. Based on this understanding, it can be stated that the researcher
putting more emphasis on the development of the survey questionnaire rather than analysing the
research philosophies and approaches or the justification behind choosing specific research
approaches and techniques. However, the size of the respondents and research strategy are
clearly mentioned in the research methodology. For instance, the target sample size was
comprised of the Cumhuriyet University Faculty of Literature and Faculty of Science. The

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sample size was huge with a number of 675 where 186 respondents were collected from Science
and 489 were collected from Literature. However, there was no specific mention of difference in
respondents from the two faculties. The research was going to take a survey on the students with
257 questionnaire attached with the survey form. Easy sampling method was used with a
research primary descriptive analysis research design. Moreover, the research was intended to
run the correlation and regression analysis in order to attain the expected results.
The findings of the research tried to determine the impact of the independent variables on
the dependent variables. The demographic analysis was rightly defined the number and
percentage of fields and gender. Based on the analysis the percentage of respondents from the
literature faculty was higher than the faculty of science. Moreover, there are differences in
gender where number of female participants was more than male students. The findings were
depended on the mean, standard deviation and correlation and regression practice. Based on the
mean and standard deviation on critical thinking, it can be seen that the most of the respondents
supported from occasionally to generally likert scale range. For the self-leadership levels also the
likert scale measures denoted a range from occasionally to generally. It means for the
relationship between critical thinking and its dependable factors a moderate to high level impact
can be found. On the other hand, in course of the self-leadership level a high level of impact was
drawn.
On the other hand, the correlation findings clearly reflected some positive and negative
relationships among the variables. For instance, the relationship between self-awarding and
systematicity was very poor with a 0.134 value. It means there was least impact of systematicity
on the self-awarding practice. On the other hand, relationship between the self-confidence and
goal setting is highly valuable that pointed out a score of 0.424. It proved an intricate relationship

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between the self-confidence and goal setting where the goal setting would help to boost the self-
confidence. In fact, the relationships are made between the sub-variables that created an in-depth
analysis between the independent variables and dependent variable. Based on the Anova test it
was found that the first hypothesis that critical thinking has a positive effect on behaviour
focused strategies cannot be determined because the alternative value exceeded the value of P
with .722. As per the article of Curtis, Comiskey and Dempsey (2016) it can be stated that the
value of P has to be <0.05 so that the alternative hypothesis can be taken into consideration.
However, for the relationship between natural prize strategies and critical thinking and
constructive thinking and critical thinking was proved due to the value was below 0.05 in case of
natural prize strategies and <0.01 in case of constrictive thinking models.
The significance of this research is highly important in order to get proper understanding
regarding the role of the self-leadership in association with critical thinking skills. There are
some significant measure that the research was focused. For instance, choosing the students
rather than the managers of an organisation made the research authentic and unique enough to
elucidate the relationship between self-leadership practice and the critical thinking skills. In
respect to this, understanding the impact of critical thinking on the self-leadership practice makes
it highly relevant to the students for developing leadership skills in the light of critical thinking
process.
It is true that the critical thinking practice has limited or poor impact on the behave focus
strategies. There are certain factors like the self-appraisal, self-reward and the self-discipline.
According to Samuel (2019) those elements are not directly encouraged a person for thinking
critically. On the other hand, there is certainly some correlation between the critical thinking
practice and the constructive thinking model strategies. For instance, Doody and Bailey (2016)

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opined that the critical thinking enhances the creativity and boost the thinking process to deal
with any event. As a result that it becomes so important for any individual to put emphasis on
critical thinking skills. However, there are some doubt about the role of the critical thinking on
natural strategies. Based on the research of Wade (2016) it can be stated that critical thinking is
not able to achieve natural rewards all the time because there are still other factors that are
responsible to determine the factors of critical thinking and its success.
There are some weaknesses that this research is followed. First of all, there are no such
mention about the background of the research and it becomes a problem for the readers to
understand the importance of the research. Moreover, the research methodology failed to
mention the research philosophy and the research approach. On the other hand, the research
certainly a gem for developing effective measure for the student to develop and build up their
leadership quality so that it will provide them strategic advantages in future. The research
outcome was also very interesting to view a close link between critical thinking that will attain
natural prize and constructive thinking.
The value and scope the research have a great impact on individual employees and
managers. It can be stated that the role of the present day organisation is immense and extensive
due to the high competitiveness in the market. Therefore, it becomes so important for the
employees and individuals to compete with it and facilitate an effective measure in the process of
organisational progress and self-development practice.

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Reference
Ay, F. A., Karakaya, A., & Yilmaz, K. (2015). Relations between self-leadership and critical
thinking skills. Procedia-social and Behavioral sciences, 207, 29-41.
Curtis, E. A., Comiskey, C., & Dempsey, O. (2016). Importance and use of correlational
research. Nurse researcher, 23(6).
Doody, O., & Bailey, M. E. (2016). Setting a research question, aim and objective. Nurse
researcher, 23(4).
Epitropaki, O., Mueller, J. S., & Lord, R. G. (2018). Unpacking the Socio-cognitive Foundations
of Creative Leadership: Bridging Implicit Leadership and Implicit Creativity Theories.
In Creative Leadership (pp. 39-56). Routledge.
Javed, B., Khan, A. A., Bashir, S., & Arjoon, S. (2017). Impact of ethical leadership on
creativity: the role of psychological empowerment. Current Issues in Tourism, 20(8),
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Javed, B., Rawwas, M. Y., Khandai, S., Shahid, K., & Tayyeb, H. H. (2018). Ethical leadership,
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of Management & Organization, 24(3), 388-405.
Samuel, D. F. (2019). Critical Thinking in Science and Technology: Importance, Rationale, and
Strategies. In Handbook of Research on Critical Thinking and Teacher Education
Pedagogy (pp. 177-193). IGI Global.

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Wade, W. P. (2016). Critical Thinking through Debate: Skills, Dispositions, and Teaching
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