Critical Thinking: Are We Educating the Nurse Educator?

Today's ever-changing, challenging, and complicated health care arena demands a professional nurse who employs critical thinking. It is assumed that the nurse educator will facilitate these critical thinking skills in the student nurse through use of various teaching-learning methods. A variety of methods to enhance critical thinking in the student nurse are identified in the nursing literature, but there is little information on how master's level education is preparing the nurse educator to facilitate critical thinking in the student nurse. The purpose of this descriptive exploratory study was to discover to what extent courses included in the nurse educator specialization are inclusive of course content designed to prepare the nurse educator to promote critical thinking and where the content is placed within the curriculum. Nursing master's programs offering a nurse educator specialization were invited to submit course syllabi and course modules for review. Twenty of the 22 participating programs included course content on methods to promote critical thinking. Topics included critical thinking, simulation, problem based learning, role-playing, questioning, small-group activities, case studies, journals, writing assignments, and debate. This content was found in courses on instruction, nurse theory, curriculum development, and practicum courses.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis - University Access Only

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Graduate Nursing

Year

2008

Author dc:creator

• Erickson, Christina H.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gloria Craig

• studying and teaching nursing
• critical thinking
• Nursing

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2008 Gloria Craig. All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/933

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openprairie.sdstate.edu:etd-1933