Import Test

As a nursing professor in a community college, I find that the most useful knowledge or skill that our students need is the art of critical thought and the ability to learn how to access resources. In this rapidly changing healthcare environment, it is expected that the new nurse comes to the table with technical ability and expertise in the safe perfomance of nursing duties. The missing part of this scenario is that this inexperience leads to the potential for error. Without the past experience to draw from, this new nurse must rely on others to assist and guide the process of learning. Unfortuately, many of these novice nurses begin their jobs on the night shift where there are few seasoned peers to help them make critical decisions that could impact patient care. Therefore, we, as teachers, need to teach these students when to ask for help and how to find answers to their questions. Without this learned ablility, many a new nurse may find that the job is too overwhelming and stressful and will opt leave the nursing field all together. With the critical nursing shortage we have now in our nation, it is imperative that each nursing educator arm her students with  survival tools for their future nursing careers.

I am grateful to Sharon Stone for sharing her insightful comments on nursing education.  Her response to the 'educational question of the year' highlights the problems that novice nurses face when they enter the healthcare profession. I agree with her suggestion that nursing education should foster critical thinking skills and socialize students to ask for help.  I also think we shouldn't let our community partners (hospitals etc.) off the hook.....possibly they could provide more support for the newly graduated nurse...mentoring programs etc.

Another thought would be to get some input from Patricia Benner....She is directing the Study of Nursing Education at Carnegie....also, she wrote the book that captures this problem..... From Novice to Expert....___

The National Council of Teachers of English in partnership with a number of other organizations is planning a conference on 21st century skills for Fall 2006, so I am very interested in what contributors to this blog identify as important for what students need know how to do and be.

Having recently read Etienne Wenger's Learning for a Small Planet, I am intrigued by his "curriculum for meaningfulness" that would include the following experiences:

experience of localized depth

experience of boundary crossing

experience of time depth

experience of time dislocation

experiend of cultural dislocation

experience of agency and power,

experience of scale.

He summarizes, "I would suspect that one needs at least one serious, transformative experience of each kind to be a full participant in the 21st century."

Real food for thought as we consider how we contribute to structuring educational experiences for students.

As I read the above comments and remember last semester's research papers, I find myself agreeing that students need transformative experiences, and that these experiences often help them hone their critical thought processes and research skills.  (Though most students equate critical thinking with pit bull inquiry -- “Why? Who says?  How come?”)    

However, I also think we as educators must remember that transformations aren't always accompanied by lightning bolts.  It's often the quiet encouragement of a caring professor or continued success through hard work that provide fertile ground for growth. Community colleges are perfectly placed to provide students with the skills so necessary for success in the ever increasing complexity of the 21st century.  Let’s not forget that even when we’re buried under the five class schedule or a work-to-rule order, taking the time to encourage and require excellence make the difference for our students.

What knowledge or skills will students need most to be effective citizens of our world in the future?

I know I’m echoing Barbara Cambridge and others when I say that I think that interdisciplinary critical thinking and problem solving, which requires the ability to locate and use resources as necessary, along with a willingness to think and act globally and “out of the box” present the biggest challenges for us in higher education.  The reason that I think that these understandings and skills present us with the greatest challenges is because I believe it is difficult, though not impossible, to nurture the development of skills and attitudes that one does not him or herself possess, and many of us are products of an educational system that valued “following the rules” over “thinking outside of the box”.  I started my education in Catholic schools, and quite clearly remember being punished by having to sit under the desk for having been too active and talkative in KINDERGARTEN!  Certainly times have changed, but I, along with my same-age colleagues, are all products of those times and similar educational practices.  As an undergraduate education major, I learned how to “manage a classroom”, create thematic bulletin board displays, and present content.  I do not remember learning how to engage students in the process of learning, create ill-defined problems for them to work collaboratively to solve, nor how to create multiple and varied opportunities for them to demonstrate their learning.  I do remember learning how to create multiple choice tests and use student grades as a mechanism for feedback to students regarding their learning process.  

As a community college faculty developer and adjunct faculty member, I am particularly concerned with our role in preparing our students to take leadership, as opposed to “worker bee” roles in the future.  Certainly we need employees as well as employers, but I worry that many of our students are products of K-12 learning experiences where the only way to succeed was to “follow the rules”, and by the time they reach us, they have become passive “consumers” of the educational experience, seeking the credentials necessary for employment, rather than the critical thinking capacity necessary to lead.  I believe it is our particular challenge, as community college educators, to provide our students with the kinds of relevant learning experiences that require their active participation and demand that they learn to articulate, in multiple formats, as well as defend, their thought processes.

One of the biggest challenges facing Americans in general and American students is truly feeling like a member of a global community. We are proud to be Americans, rightly so, but we need to feel tangibly connected to people in India, China, Palestine, Pakistan, South Africa and many other places. We need to believe that we share experiences with these people, that their successes and failures are allied to our successes and failures and that we are responsible for their lives as they are for ours.

The alternative, believing that we are separate--better, smarter, more deserving-- has been a dangerous ideology historically.

Our students will work with people who have grown up in others countries and cultures. They need to see this as a plus and realize that the American way of doing things is not the only way and not the best way. Learning about the native, grass-roots HIV/AIDS prevention and education effort in the townships of South Africa or the documentation of Pol Pot's regime by Cambodian artist Van Nath brings a powerful realization--that there are courageous, intelligent, moral and insightful people beyond our borders.

    It seems to be part of human nature to initially reject others whom we perceive as being different from ourselves.  Our students need to be prepared to accept and work cooperatively with others who are not similar to themselves. They need knowledge of other cultures, and should realize that their own personal assumptions about basics like time, space, and interpersonal relations won't necessarily match with those of someone from another location in our global community. If our students learn to suspend judgement and work around any barriers, they will be prepared to work transnationally in our increasingly interconnected world.

Great discussion...

An effective citizen should realize that the truth is not so easily arrived at but which everyone believes they know and therefore reality must be an illusion (BEAUTY (and TRUTH) IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER).

This in itself is TRANSFORMATIVE.  How do we get there?  As educators we need to provide those seeds for growth.  We need to be transformed. The key is MINDFULNESS.  We need to become aware of how our minds work, how we deal with the myriad of responses we make each day. Then we need to change the direction of the ship we call Public Higher Education in this state.

We need radical changes in our thinking and unfortunately there are few, if any, signs that this is happening.

What knowledge or skills will students need most to be effective citizens of our world in the future?

It may very well be that what our students need most we are ill-suited to provide:  a sense of certainty, a feeling of stability, and an assurance that meaning can found in the chaos that dominates and defines our world today.  As an English professor, at ease with textual ambiguity and skeptical of reductive readings, I can hardly simplify things for my students.  But this brings me squarely to my point:  perhaps our students need to be at home with difficulty, with complexity that strains the mind and heart.  If we say to our students that the problems awaiting them will probably call upon multiple approaches and upon an easiness with not knowing one-size-fits-solutions, we are doing them a service.  But we can't stop there:  we need to endow our students with habits of thinking that are highly complex and anything but dualistic.  Don't dis difficulty, let's tell them; embrace it and learn.

KRU6nP Hi from Russia!

skb03T Hi from Russia!