Assessing students’ critical thinking abilities via a systematic evaluation of essays
本文提出一个评估框架，用于分析商科研究生作业中的批判性思维成分，发现学生在高级澄清和辅助能力上得分高，但在基本澄清和推理方面较弱。
In this paper, we address critical thinking skill assessment in the context of management education. This paper uses Ennis’ well-known list of critical thinking abilities to identify assessable critical thinking components present in student work. A sample of 152 graduate written assignments designed to assess critical thinking is used as a basis for analysis. These were taken from a business analysis subject in a large Australian business school over a 6-year period. A methodological framework is proposed and applied to this data set, offering a way of assessing evidence of five representative categories pertaining to critical thinking in a business context. The framework includes a basic clarification (BC), bases for inferences (BI), inferences (IN), advanced clarification (AC) and auxiliary abilities (AA). Results indicate that the essays rank highly on AA and AC but low on BC, BI and IN. While critical thinking is partially evidenced in the study corpus, attention is needed in terms of refining the measurement framework dedicated to eliciting specific critical thinking components. We provide the initial elements of such a framework in this paper and make suggestions for how it can be improved. Implications for the theory and practice of management education are outlined.