Concept Maps as an Educational Strategy to Enhance Critical Thinking among Student Nurses

Abstract

A quasi experimental study to assess the effectiveness of concept maps as a teaching strategy to facilitate critical thinking among student nurses with regard to congenital heart defects was conducted with primary objective to assess effectiveness of concept maps as a teaching strategy on critical thinking of student nurses with regard to congenital heart defects. Ethical clearance from the Institutional Review Board was obtained. The conceptual framework adopted was Stufflebeam’s CIIP model. A quantitative experimental research approach was adopted for the study with non-equivalent control group design using total enumerative sampling technique. The study involved 86 B.Sc. 3rd year student nurses of Nightingale Institute of Nursing (45) and Rufaida College of Nursing (41) as control and experimental group respectively. The control group was exposed to lecture method, one of the conventional teaching methodologies, and experimental group was taught with concept maps. The primary outcome variable, critical thinking ability was measured using a structured critical thinking questionnaire. The pretest and posttest scores were assessed on day 1 and day 10 respectively. Data collected were analyzed using SPSS 16. Maximum number of sample subjects 43(77%) in control group were in the age group of 19–21 years as compared to 35 (76%) in the experimental group. Majority of the students 31 (68%) belonged to Christian religion in the control group whereas most of the students 19 (46%) belonged to Muslim religion in the experimental group. The findings also show that the mean posttest critical thinking scores of the control group (15.42 + 3.48) and experimental group (18.80 + 5.55) were higher than their mean pretest critical thinking scores. However, comparison revealed a statistically significant difference between the posttest scores of both the groups indicating a higher score in experimental group. The study showed a significant improvement in the critical thinking ability of student nurses who were exposed to concept maps. It is needed to develop a critical thinking assessment tool which will suit the Indian nursing community and study can be conducted on a large sample for different topics.