10.1177/1052562902239247 ARTICLE JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION / February 2003 Smith / TEACHING STUDENTS HOW TO THINK BEYOND CRITICAL THINKING AND DECISION MAKING: TEACHING BUSINESS STUDENTS HOW TO THINK Gerald F. Smith University of Northern Iowa Teaching students how to think is a universal goal of educational institutions. Business schools have addressed this goal by injecting critical thinking activi- ties into their programs, and by offering courses on managerial decision mak- ing. This paper reviews these efforts, and concludes that they are not adequate to the challenge of teaching business students how to think effectively. It pro- poses a comprehensive thinking skills program that includes critical thinking and decision making content, but also addresses the many other thinking tasks managers perform. The paper discusses programmatic issues and provides pedagogical advice pertaining to the teaching of thinking skills in business schools. Keywords: critical thinking; decision making; management education; prob- lem solving; teaching of thinking. A consistent finding and concern raised by studies of the American educa- tional system is that students at all levels are unable to think effectively (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; U.S. Department of Education, 1990). They cannot understand challenging texts or complex issues; their reasoning is often illogical and they do not critically assess 24 Author’s Note: Correspondence should be addressed to Gerald F. Smith, Department of Man- agement, College of Business Administration, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0125; phone: 319-273-7024; fax: 319-273-2922; e-mail: jerry.smith@uni.edu. JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION, Vol. 27 No. 1, February 2003 24-51 DOI: 10.1177/1052562902239247 © 2003 Sage Publications