Nursing Global Learning Education

Global Learning In Nursing Education

What Is Global Learning,Implementation of Global Nursing Education,Impact of Global Nursing Education,Outcome of Global Learning.

What Is Global Learning

    Global learning in nursing education is an integrated comprehensive framework that provides students with multiple ways of learning, including theoretical, experiential, and reflexive learning Global learning is "a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural , physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people's lives and the earth's sustainability" (Rhodes, 2010) Through reflective and critical thinking, global learning provides students with a deeper understanding of themselves and members of the global community , both "around the corner and across the globe." 

Implementation of Global Nursing Education

    Nurses need to be educated as global citizens who have a moral responsibility and professional competency to care and promote health beyond their local communities and national institutions (Chavez, Peter, & Gastaldo, 2008). The new global interdependence calls for all persons across the globe to extend their thinking about moral responsibility and health beyond their local communities and national citizenship and to become citizens of the world (Crigger, Brannigan, & Baird, 2006). Nussbaum (1997) describes three capacities necessary for the cultivation of global citizenship. 

    The first is reflexivity, the capacity to examine our beliefs, traditions, habits, and ourselves: critically. Nussbaum's second capacity for global citizenship entails the notion of "moral cosmopolitanism," meaning adopting the fundamental view of all persons as fellow citizens who have equal moral worth and deserve equal moral consideration. Narrative imagination is the third capacity. 

    This requires the ability to imagine what it might be like to be a person different from oneself, and to allow such imagination to inform understanding of the other person's experiences, emotions, and desires (Nussbaum, 1997). Being exposed to other cultures and people is one aspect of developing this kind of narrative imagination (Chavez, Bender, & Gastaldo, 2011).

    A theoretical framework in global learning, specifically postcolonial framework, provides an analytic lens to look at the impact of health with the intersecting factors of power, race, gender, and social class. Postcolonial feminism represents an opportunity for nurses to acknowledge their multiple locations as individuals and health care professionals. It challenges deeply held ce rtainties about the "right way" to provide care and values all knowledge as being situated within a given place and within the power relations therein. 

    Using this perspective enables us to consider multiple perspectives on meanings of health and illness (Anderson & McCann, 2002), as well as the complex issues associated with the global locations of nursing practice.Through global learning, nursing students become sensitized to their own culturally established perspectives on health care and become capable of identifying and challenging underlying values and assumptions of their nursing education and practice. They are able to examine how social inequalities are located and constructed within a political, historical, cultural, and economic context.

Impact of Global Nursing Education

    Over a decade ago, Thorne (1997) argued that nursing education has traditionally fostered social awareness within a limited local sphere of influence. At that time, the literature reflected an ongoing interest in international nursing and an inherent goodness of educational exchange programs. However, there was little analysis of what motivates students or, beyond simply providing "practical" experience, how leaders/teachers promote an attitudinal shift in students involved in such programs (Thome, 1997).

     Studying the experiences of globally aware nurses, Thorne specifically explored the origins of their global awareness and their analysis of nursing as a whole in relation to the larger global perspective, in order to shed light on these more critical questions. Findings raised two key points regarding nursing education specifically. First, most of these nurses reported little or no formal learning in their nursing programs on topics they considered relevant to a global perspective. Second, some noted that their desire to incorporate preexisting interest in global health into their clinical learning was generally not supported, either by faculty or peers. 

    Nursing education that recognizes the importance of cultural sensitivity in cultivating global consciousness ought to encourage "critical analysis of the status quo in health care and the larger society" (Thorne, 1997, p. 440). In this vein, international exchange programs offer particularly rich learning with regard to alternative (ie, non-Western) health and social structures. She concluded by calling for a reexamination of uncritical approaches to international nursing work with their roots in colonial paternalism, those framed simply as charitable efforts to assist needy nations. 

    Some of the recurring benefits that appear in international nursing studies can inform the impact of global learning. Benefits of international experiences include changed values, increased consciousness of social justice and global health issues, significantly improved communication skills, learning to think unconventionally about other cultures, development of confidence, growth in competency, and the therapeutic use of self (Evanson & Zust , 2006; Lee, 2004; Mill, Yonge, & Cameron, 2005; Sloand, Bower, le Groves, 2005)

Outcome of Global Learning

    While there is increasing emergence and investment in many forms of global learning interchangeably used for global service learning, global health practical, international placements/exchange, and so on, systematic evaluation receives comparatively less attention. While nursing researchers have begun to evaluate the effectiveness of student learning within local contexts, a challenge exists in applying their findings to international settings, settings that represent a complexity of factors that influence learning in particular ways (Stufflebeam, 2001). 

    There is a need for more tested strategies to evaluate learning and practice related to international experiences and global learning evaluation results will contribute to a growing body of evidence supporting the integration of global learning in nursing education. Evaluation of Critical Perspectives in Global Health (CPGH) rein- forces many of the common themes reflective of transformative learning, CPGH, like many global learning initiatives, can only accommodate limited numbers of students and continue to be an elective course instead. of a credit course. This begs the question as to why many nursing curricula do not integrate global learning as a required or foundational course.