Nurse educators—still challenged by critical thinking

Abstract

Educators are thwarted by inconsistent critical thinking definitions, poor understandings about measurable ways to teach critical thought processes, and a lack of reliable and valid nursing-specific assessment tools to effectively evaluate student reasoning. Standardized measures of students' critical thinking show contradictory measurement results. Assumptions that nurse educators possess highly evolved critical thinking skills need to be examined. It appears that continued attention and new approaches to critical thinking are still needed. More still needs to be known about relationships between the critical thinking abilities of the nursing faculty and the ways students are taught these skills through the curriculum and clinical experiences.