The Development of Critical Thinking Skills in Undergraduate Supervisory Management Units: efficacy of student peer assessment

ABSTRACT

Well‐developed critical thinking skills are essential to good management, yet the fundamentals of critical thinking are often not taught explicitly to management students. This paper reports on the efficacy of a module designed to develop students’ critical thinking skills in the context of peer evaluation in a second‐year supervisory management unit. The module comprised a lecture and a seminar on the nature of critical thinking, followed by a series of seminars in which students practiced the skills taught. Sixty‐eight student oral literature reviews were delivered and evaluated over the first two semesters in 1997. Each presentation was graded by several small groups of students, with the assistance of a detailed marking guide. Results indicate that tuition in critical thinking strategies and skills may influence both peer/tutor grading agreement, and literature review content.