A NEW DIRECTION FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT FOR PROFESSIONAL NURSING: A PARADIGM SHIFT FROM TRAINING TO EDUCATION.

Description

This work is designed to provide a basis for nursing educators to change nursing curriculum construction from having a singular basis in Tylerian behaviorist theory as influenced by Mager and other hard-line behaviorist to a multivious approach that includes behaviorism but does not rely either exclusively or even primarily upon it as basic curriculum theory. What modern nursing education must rely upon is a curriculum that is personally liberating, critical, and transforming for the individual and society. To do this curriculum development must be based in lived experiences that moves persons to reflection and beyond to praxis through thematizing, problematizing, and interpreting their known world and creating the consciousness to perceive of that world outside the prescribed notions that are given by social programming. Toward this end curriculum is redefined herein as those interactions and transactions that occur between students and teachers and among students with the intent that learning takes place. It suggests as its first principle that the aim of all education is to develop mature, life-long learners. To that end it presents four theoretical models necessary to the paradigm. These are (1) a learner maturity continuum on which five critical learner positions are identified in sequential order from least to most mature; (2) a typology of learning suggesting six types of learning: item, directive, rationale, contextual, syntactical, and inquiry; (3) a set of criteria for shaping teacher-student interactions and (4) a set of criteria for selecting or devising learning episodes. Since this is an interactive paradigm, it rests upon teacher skills in both educative dialogue and discussion and structuring educative learning activities. Therefore considerable space is given to these two aspects of teaching. Mini-models to help teachers structure learning activities include: The teacher-student alliance shift, the tripartite alliance, the active to passive learning continuum, the three aspects of learning episodes, the six factors influencing complexity, the six factors continuum, a map for planning learning activities/episodes, and examples of educational modes and heuristics. Graduates are expected to have a sense of responsible connectedness to community, be critically conscious, and have the potential for being skilled scholar clinicians.

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