This study examined the effectiveness of using the story writing and story time method in clinical teaching.
Mezerow’s Transformative Learning Theory, Feminist Pedagogy, and Ricoeur’s writing on narratives guided the development of this teaching method. Story writing and story time encourage students to relate theoretical disease concepts to patient reality and to engage in discussion and dialogue that help develop diverse patient interventions.
This study included two phases of evaluation. In both phases, each student during a 7-week clinical wrote a story of an obstetric or a pediatric health problem. Each story included main characters, physical and psychosocial alterations, interdisciplinary interventions, and selected nursing focuses on patient teaching, ethics, and culture. Each story was read aloud by its writer and analyzed by the group in story time during the post clinical conference. The faculty facilitated story analysis and helped students develop alternative interventions.
Phase I evaluation included 17 ASN and 9 BSN students. Their written comments on story experiences were analyzed for common themes.
In Phase II, 16 ASN students scored a 5-item questionnaire before and after the story experience. This questionnaire assessed knowledge acquisition in physical alterations, psychosocial alterations, interventions, legal/ethical/cultural issues, and community resources. The questionnaire had a 5-point Likert format with 1 being strongly agree and 5 being strongly disagree. Paired t tests were used to compare pre and post test mean scores.
Common themes describing the story writing and story time experiences included bringing learning to a personal level, a way of knowing, clinical thinking, and more in-depth learning. Pre and post test mean scores were significantly different, indicating students increased understanding in five knowledge areas after the story experience (p < .05).
Findings suggested that the story writing and story time is an effective way of teaching. Future research, however, should include comparison groups.
Session #1112 - Toward a Science of Nursing Education: New Pedagogies/New Possibilities
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)