An approach to the facilitation and assessment of critical thinking in nurse education

The results are mixed but show that the adoption of a problem solving approach to lesson planning together with tutorials sustained throughout the course can bring about the required level in students final written work.

Abstract

Problems around the production of written work to a given level, i.e. critical analysis, have dominated discussion of course standards in recent months since the introduction of the higher award pathway in post-registered nurse education. This paper seeks to address these concerns by suggesting a model for teachers to use in course planning and by use of an action research approach indicates to what extent: 1. The model works with two specific courses. 2. It is possible to assess student performance by an examination of their written work. The paper attempts to address issues related to why nurses have difficulty with the concepts and to what extent issues of power and culture play a part in such difficulty. The action research itself is based around two cycles of the research model using examples of student work to explain results. Overall the results are mixed but show that the adoption of a problem solving approach to lesson planning together with tutorials sustained throughout the course can bring about the required level in students final written work.