Facilitating the cognitive growth of baccalaureate nursing students: using writing strategies for thinking and cognitive development /28 cm

The purpose of this study was to discover whether a nurse educator could facilitate the cognitive development of baccalaureate nursing students using writing strategies that challenged their thinking. The literature focuses first on the model of the cognitive development of college students as Perry first delineated it (1970) and later modified it (1978; 1981), as well as on how other researchers have elaborated and extended it from a descriptive to a prescriptive model. Also, literature related to writing as a strategy to facilitate learning, thinking, and developing is investigated, and specific writing tasks used to those ends are described. The study was carried out with two groups of junior nursing students. A study group, consisting of 29 students, participated in a semester long nursing concepts course where writing was used to stimulate cognitive development. The control group, consisting of 16 students, enrolled in another section of the same course, was not provided the writing experience. It was found that the total group (n = 45) demonstrated levels of cognitive development consistent with development of nursing students described in other studies (Colucciello, 1986; Frisch, 1987; Valiga 1983). An examination of student writing in response to writing assignments revealed that different kinds of tasks were effective in challenging students at different levels of development; different kinds of tasks also elicited different kinds of cognitive responses. consistent with other studies (Stonewater & Daniels, 1983), it was found that there was not a statistically significant difference between the two groups in cognitive development at the end of the semester.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Curriculum and Instruction

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1990

Author dc:creator

• Givens, Karolyn W.

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Burton, John K.
• Weber, Larry J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Kelly, Patricia Proudfoot
• Castleberry, Karma
• Magliaro, Susan G.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08252008-162801

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/39249