Teaching Styles in Health Care and Nursing Education

Styles and Strategies in Nursing Education

Teaching Styles in Health Care and Nursing Education define what kind of teacher are you. Baby Boomers , Sensory Learning and Veterans. 

Evaluate Your Teaching Style

    An important basis for creative teaching strategies is an honest and accurate assessment of one's teaching style, skills and knowledge level. Instructors are often hired or delegated to teach because of their speaking skills. While public speaking is an important skill, building a teaching environment that encourages learning requires much more. To have a meaningful impact, teachers need to take a comprehensive and holistic approach. 

    This is where self-assessment and creative teaching strategies come into play. Sometimes self-assessment is as simple as asking yourself, "Why do I teach?" By analyzing your personal passion for teaching while assessing your strengths and weaknesses, educators can begin to explore personal teaching philosophies and styles. Self-assessment can overcome some of the previously mentioned challenges in teaching creativity in the classroom.

Identify Your Strengths

    Some factors to assess are previous teaching experience, clinical experience with specific populations, and interpersonal skills. Teachers can play the role of sage, mentor, information juggler, expert, peer, and cheerleader; Nursing educators often feel like all of these characters at different times. The following questions can help you evaluate your teaching and set personal goals:

• Are you familiar enough with the material to present it in an understandable way?

• Do you have enough professional experience to offer a personal perspective? If not, can you work out the finer points by reading, talking to others, or using student experience levels?

• Do you have a talent for creating a learning environment in which students can ask questions, explain, and consider alternatives?

• Can you use feedback and assessment information to give students a clear picture of their progress in the classroom and help them improve understanding and performance?

• Is it a positive role model for the profession and for the need for lifelong learning?

• Does it encourage collaboration among students, encourage active learning, and communicate high expectations?

• Does it respect different learning styles and adapt teaching to the needs of the different students in the group?

• Do you organize your presentations, class behavior and class structure? Although some teachers are more organized than others, new students need structured methods. These give them a foundation from which to learn, organize their own thoughts, and model concepts in a way that makes sense.

• Are you comfortable presenting the material in different settings and with groups of different sizes? In these circumstances, can you adjust your teaching methods and styles to get the most benefit for the class?

• Do you have the energy to teach with enthusiasm? student's perspective . It is also important to consider what each class expects from the teachers. In Schell's1 study, students said they wanted their teachers to:

• Be supportive and encourage personal growth.

• Include creativity and different strategies in their teaching.

• Be willing to both learn and teach, demonstrate accessibility and availability, and encourage an interactive environment.

• Maintain the boundaries between teacher and student.

• Show respect for others and personal qualities worth respecting.

• Provide feedback to your students. These statements provide an acceptable consensus about what students perceive to be the qualities necessary for success. Next, we look at ways teachers and students can combine their personal style with creative teaching strategies to achieve the best possible outcome.

Who Are The New Students And How Do They Learn?
Get To Know Your Students

    In a learning situation, the responsibility lies on both sides. One of the educator's roles is to assess students and develop strategies that target their individual and collective needs. Various methods can be used to describe today's students and their own specific learning needs. First, as with any cohort, we must keep in mind that this is a diverse group, reflecting different ages, cultural backgrounds, contexts, beliefs, and learning styles. 

    Today's nursing student groups may be more diverse than ever. In fact, their heterogeneity can create the greatest need for innovative teaching strategies. A participatory conference infused with creative strategies can cater to a wider range of learning styles and needs than a simple conference format.

Are Today's Students Different?

    A characteristic of many of today's students is the need to have fun while learning, essentially to be entertained. This is not to say that creative teaching strategies should "simplify" or make teaching less meaningful. However, a generation that has been entertained by quick stimulation may need a bigger push to pay attention to the content of the lesson, especially when it is presented dryly. This type of student will benefit from strategies to improve retention and enjoyment of class. 

    In contrast, many of today's students grasp concepts faster than previous generations, making them more likely to lose interest in boring or repetitive material. It is not enough to provide insightful ideas and experiences to expand the material. Today's students expect the material to be entertaining and perhaps intriguing. On the other hand, many other students in the class are learning at a more traditional pace, adding to the challenge for teachers. 

    While creative strategies do not guarantee fascination, they can provide fun and pleasant breaks in the rhythm of the lesson. Marketers tell us that the TV viewer's attention span is 6 to 10 minutes. This statistic is reflected in the current intervals between commercials during television broadcasts. Therefore, methods tailored to the predominant attention span of the class may be most effective in reinforcing material and retaining students' attention.

Sensory learning

    The categories of learning styles are also important: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Do your students learn mainly by seeing, hearing or touching? Different learning styles justify different teaching strategies. In the general population, it is assumed that 80 percent of students are visual, 10 percent are auditory, and 10 percent are kinesthetic. 

    Many argue that nurses have a greater propensity for kinesthetic learning, or learning through touch, demonstration, or manipulation. This idea is not surprising for teachers of psychomotor skills, where pointing, touching, practicing and proving skills are the most effective ways to achieve mastery. 

    Learners who can identify their style can also discover the learning methods that best enhance their learning. Innovative strategies that allow for the greatest sensory stimulation may be most effective. Some of these strategies capture more than one meaning and allow different learners to process information on their own personal level. For example, showing a movie clip in class can engage visual and auditory learners, while using content-appropriate dimes can help visual and kinesthetic learners remember the material.

Dominant Hemisphere

    Other authors have recommended analyzing learner brain dominance to assess learning styles. Left-brained people are analytical and detail-oriented; Right-brain dominant people are more global and creative in their learning styles. The need to adapt teaching styles to people who are both left- and right brained is a key responsibility of teachers. The left-brained learner may resist creative teaching strategies, seeing them as trivial. The right-brained learner may need to focus on goals to ensure that the instructional strategy is valuable and purposeful, not just fun. Remembering that each of us uses both sides of the brain is important to improving the learner

When You Were Young

    Finally, when evaluating students, we must consider generational differences. Identifying generational differences and determining educational applications, "the question is not 'How old are you?' but 'When were you young?' Where elementary school experiences were dominated by a blackboard or computer screen, they can gain insight into their current learning needs.

    Accustomed to computers, television, and new technology, young people learn quickly.This indoctrination leads to students to demand interesting and relevant content Recent Studies have focused on generational thinking and the impact of generational differences on education, interests, and performance in the workplace Several newly available resources describe generations according to characteristics learning.

The Veterans

    Traditionalists or "veterans" born between 1922 and 1945 tend to be attentive, respectful, and passive students. They respond to more traditional delivery methods and tend to be motivated to learn and work. According to Hobbs, veterans build on prior knowledge, respect the knowledge of others, and learn best when they are respected for their current level of knowledge and experience. 

    This group finds creative strategies the most uncomfortable. They want to stay within their comfort zone, the lecture format, and their ideals of traditional teacher-student roles. You may also resist group work. On the contrary, they tend to obey orders or directions in the classroom. This tendency can lead them to cooperate, however reluctantly, with creative strategies.

Baby boomers

    The "baby boomers" born between 1946 and 1964 - today both students and parents of students - are aware of their role as the largest generation of consumers. This group is both demanding and responsive, and may or may not support technology, but has high standards for instruction. Boomers often place responsibility for learning on the quality of instruction. They will also put significant effort into learning if they perceive the information as valid, relevant, and ultimately useful in their future life or work. Boomers learn from experience. 

    They want to be respected for their current level of experience and learn better with experiential teaching strategies. Sometimes referred to as Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980 respond well to creative methods of learning and teaching. This group finds innovations related to technology and healthcare fascinating and more of a challenge than an obstacle. They are a group that loves to learn, but for whom learning should be fun. This generation cannot remember life without a television and they were teenagers at the dawn of the computer age. They see education as a necessary step towards another goal and work to achieve a balance between work and leisure.

Generation Why?

    The last group called "Millennials" or "Generation Why?" are the "Twenty somethings". They represent the majority of nursing students and nurses who are just entering the job market and need intensive educational guidance and interventions. This group is a fast learner, comfortable with innovation, expects learning to have a creative side, and is committed to their own learning needs. Generation Why? learn and live in harmony with technology and are generally accepting of group work as they have been taught group methods throughout their education.

Would You Enjoy Your Lessons?

    All of these characteristics of learning, whether heterogeneously oriented, culturally determined, influenced by brain dominance, or responding to the unique characteristics of a generation, can be summed up in one common concept: respect for the learner. The educator who is responsive to the needs of students, assesses the needs and learning styles of groups, and demonstrates a genuine attitude of interest and desire to teach will have the greatest success with innovative teaching strategies. A quote helps to summarize this material: "If you had yourself as a teacher, would you want to come to class?"