Abstract
Critical thinking and problem solving skill is important for university students to increase their chances of securing a work placement. One way to improve this skill is believed through experiences gained from an industrial training. This study aims to investigate the impact of industrial training on the improvement of students’ critical thinking and problem solving skill. Further, it aims to explore the influence of selected factors on this skill improvement. These selected factors are demographic profiles of students, supervisors and organization, students’ motivation, job scope, supervisor leadership styles and organizational culture. The study adapted Belbin Team Role Self-Perception Inventory as the research instrument of the re-search. A total of 1,227 students and 485 students from six public universities in Malaysia, have completed the pre survey and post survey respectively. Using paired t-test analysis, result exhibited that students’ shown improvement in their critical thinking and problem solving upon completion of their industrial training. The results also exhibited that this skill improvement is best predicted when students performed independence job scope, being supervised by male supervisor and the supervisor and when the supervisors exercise transformational leadership styles. Some practical and empirical implications were drawn from the findings of this study.
Highlights
Critical thinking is an active process which conceptualizes, applies, analyze, synthesizes and evaluates information that is gathered from one’s experience, reflection, observation or communication [1]
With regards to the issue of skill deficiency, this study aims to investigate the impact of industrial training on the improvement of students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skill and further to identify best predictor that contribute to this skill improvement
The results indicated that industrial training has proven as one of platform to enhance their skill
Summary
Critical thinking is an active process which conceptualizes, applies, analyze, synthesizes and evaluates information that is gathered from one’s experience, reflection, observation or communication [1] This process is important especially when dealing with complex and complicated problems as it requires high level of thinking [2]. As claimed by [3], critical thinking is a form of problem solving, where individual with high-level of thinking are able to think differently, which resulted in an extraordinary outcome [4] These extraordinary outcomes are due to metacognitive process of thinking used, which recalled and synthesized previous knowledge learned and experience acquired throughout his or her lifetime in the thinking. The simplest analogy on reflection process is when a 5 years-old child is able to switch on the lamp after remembering on her mother actions. This analogy indicates that people starts to reflect back on their past actions
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