While dealing a diverse group of students Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students Challenges and Methodologies is and educational responsibility of educators and education institutes. Here is philosophical view and curriculum need to design for this purpose.
Challenges and Methodologies for Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students
Challenges of Diverse Learning
Many accelerated programs—averaging 11 to 18 months—have been developed to educate RNs in a short period of time. The applicants for these programs are both culturally and educationally diverse, including adult students, often with degrees in other disciplines. The motivation for returning to school to be a nurse differs greatly from person to person. For some adult learners, it is job security or an economically driven reason. Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students Challenges and Methodologies
Others return to school because they dislike or are burned out by their current or previous profession. Some students have verbalized the reason for returning as a calling to help people that developed somewhere along their life journey. Regardless of the reason for returning to school, every adult student brings with them a wealth of life experiences, which both enhance and complicate the learning environment.
One complicating factor in the learning environment is that the adult student or second degree student is often in the classroom with college-aged undergraduate students. The life experiences of the adult student may be intimidating to the younger student who has difficulty relating to them. The adult student often perceives the traditional students as naive, inexperienced at life, and fortunate to have school as their only obligation.
On the other hand, the adult students may be intimidated because they have been away from school for years and have no current experiences in education to draw upon. Adult students also are often intimidated by the current technology used in the educational settings of today. A divide in the classroom and clinical area with a diverse group can easily occur and must be guarded against by developing interactive methodologies and promoting dialogue of viewpoints.
Adult students may readily share their opinions and experiences. The younger or reticent student may need encouragement to share their viewpoints or may need written outlets, such as reflection papers to feel included as a group member. Adult students are said to view education more critically, goal-oriented, and with more objectivity (Bradshaw & Nugent, 1997).
Adult students are not afraid to dialogue with instructors about their opinions and are sophisticated educational consumers (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2005). Adult students many times have self-sacrificed financially and socially to undertake a nursing program. In contrast, the younger student may have a different educational perspective. The younger student is “in the swing of things” educationally, just emerging from high school, and is technologically savvy.
The younger student views teachers as authority figures and course assignments as tasks rather than a means to an end. The younger student often lives on campus and has the educational institution’s resources more readily available to them. To deal with these differences, a classroom must encompass multiple methodologies that encourage group interaction, dialogue, and value clarification in an emancipatory, caring environment that has zero tolerance for oppression.
Developing a caring emancipatory curriculum seems like a monumental task for a nursing educator who may have 40 to 80 care plans to check, eight to 10 clinical groups to coordinate and 2 to 3 hours of lecture a week to “get all the content in.” Nevertheless, educational methodologies that promote reflection, humanism, and cultural sensitivity can yield nursing students who understand the importance of collaborative caring as opposed to nursing students who are competing for attention, grades, and recognition. Interviews, electronic dialogues, and reflection papers are just a few of the many methodologies that can promote caring.
A caring curriculum has the potential of creating caring students who will have learned to care for patients, regardless of student age. This approach also creates an environment in which individual differences are respected because they are acknowledged, explored, communicated, and understood. The following sections review some specific methodologies geared to increase understanding of diversity among students and promote an emancipatory, caring learning environment in the context of such diversity (Bankert & Kozel, 2005).
Methodologies Used to Promote Reflection Through Dialogue with Diverse Student Groups
Methodologies that promote reflection, when used in conjunction with traditional methods, have successfully (Oermann, 2003) enhanced the nursing curriculum in a course where accelerated adult students were mixed with traditional undergraduate students. These methodologies include value clarification exercises, interviews, service learning, and discussion and dialogue. Socialization is also discussed; Although not exactly classified as a methodology, it creates a more cooperative learning environment and is important for students to identify with the culture of nursing. Challenges and Methodologies for Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students .
Value Clarification
Value clarification means openly looking at what you hold true in your heart. Value clarification is a process that encompasses seven steps defined by Raths, Harmin, and Simon (1966):
- Choosing freely
- Choosing from alternatives
- Choosing after considering the consequences
- Pricing and cherishing the choice
- Publicly affirming our belief
- Acting on the valued choice
- Acting consistently and regularly on this value
Promoting Reflection in Groups of Diverse Nursing Students Value clarification assists nursing students to identify their feelings on nursing issues through awareness, validation, and social interaction (Uustal, 1977). It is an essential tool that “reflects sensitivity to human diversity” (O’Brien & Renner, 1998, p. 287).
In education, it can assist to build an emancipatory, caring learning environment because it encourages students to share intimate thought processes and reflections with one another. It is a methodology in nursing education that was very popular in the 1970s but interest waned through the 80s, possibly as a result of increased discussion about technological and ethical issues. Value clarification may be applicable again as an advantageous teaching strategy within the large, diverse classroom. Value clarification exercises can safely explore feelings in the classroom and set the stage for the patients we care for.
Uustal (1977) states: If you do not take time to examine and articulate your values you will not be fully effective with patients. The clearer you are about what you value, the more able you will be to choose and initiate a course of action that is consistent with what you say you believe in. The price paid for unexamined values and values conflicts often is confusion, indecision and inconsistency (p. 2058).
Value clarification as a methodology, can be used as a separate strategy up front or intertwined throughout the course with other classroom and clinical methodologies. Value clarification exercises can provide a good “jump start” for a large class of diverse learners. It opens dialogue, reflection, and awareness of differences in moral judgment and perspective. A value clarification exercise does not have to be overly time-consuming if used as an ongoing process.
Different pieces can be used during different class times and one piece can build on another. Value identification in nursing programs has been affirmed by accrediting bodies for quite some time (AACN, 1995) and the integration of values into the curriculum of nursing education is essential for developing a caring environment for patients (Bulfin, 2005; Weis, Schank, Eddy, & Elfrink, 1993).
Value clarification exercises, modified from Uustal (1977) . Coupling a traditional student with an adult learner for this exercise leads to insight for both students. These exercises also can be accomplished in small groups, as post-conference tools, and related to discussion about ethical dilemmas encountered in the clinical area.
Interview
Health interviews have long been used in nursing to elicit health histories and are a technique taught to nursing students to assess or gather information from patients. Besides learning about a person’s health history, the interviewer often learns about the value the interviewee places on health. It uses techniques that facilitate information gathering: good communication skills, cultural tolerance, and caring.
Students can use these techniques to interview each other to enhance collegial understanding. Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone has a chance to tell it. It is a self-disclosing assignment so care needs to be taken to protect confidentiality. For those students who are uncomfortable with being interviewed by other students, an alternative interview can be arranged with a client.
The interview should encompass more than just relaying information from mouth to pen about health status. The interview should be set up to ask specific questions about health promotion, cultural practices, family resources, complementary or alternative medicine use, and likes and dislikes.
The interview technique worked well in one class, for example, by encouraging traditional students and nontraditional students to interview each other. This class interview had specific guidelines and content related to the social, personal, and spiritual significance of a birth experience. The birth experience could be their own (many of the adult students are parents) or someone close to them (if a traditional student had no exposure to a birthing process they could look up a birth experience on the Internet and report on that as if they were the person).
This assignment was used to enhance the content of a maternal-child health nursing course (Lee & Lamp, 2005) but other topics can be used as well, such as the student experience with an aging individual, an ill adolescent or child, or an adult who is non-adherent to a healthy lifestyle.
This technique is useful in assisting students who normally may not interact with one another to dialogue with each other and create an understanding of where the other student “is coming from” in a semi-structured, safe environment. Just as interviewing is used in the clinical area, this technique may assist with behavior change, and help students to explore and resolve issues (Donnan, 2005).
How to Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students Challenges and Methodologies?
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Techniques Promoting Reflection in Diverse Nursing Students Challenges and Methodologies. h
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