Ranking components of critical thinking in accounting education and profession using multi-criteria ranking algorithm (MCRA)

The present study aims ranking components of critical thinking from viewpoint of accounting professors and employers (financial managers) in accounting education and profession. For this reason, a questionnaire containing components of critical thinking was provided to experts, professors and employers and priority of each component from the viewpoint of two groups of experts was determined using multi-criteria ranking algorithm. The present study was conducted in 2020 and 2021. The research results show that experts of professors consider the analysis component to have the highest rank, the experts of employers, whereas, prioritized as their third inference. Reasoning, personality features and mental characteristics are not one of the last priorities of employers and from the viewpoint of professors, they do not have a high rank, and interpretation and translation components, attitude and readiness and personal characteristics are almost close to each other in viewpoints of two groups of experts and differed by only one rank difference between the two groups. The most significant contrast in this ranking comparison concerns the inference component which has the first rank among the employer experts and the rank one last left among the professors' experts.