Student-Centered Learning and Multicultural Nursing Education

The Shifting Status of Nursing as a Profession

Nursing has for far too long been a profession in which the nurses involved were expected to value obedience over their own experience and expertise. That has changed dramatically in the last generation of nursing, due in part to a nursing shortage that required the medical profession to reassess and acknowledge the importance of nurses to overall patient care. Other factors that have changed the ways in which nursing is conceptualized include the evolving nature of medicine as a field—especially the increase in high-tech approaches—and the ways in which nurses are trained and educated.

Recent readings focus on how nurses are educated in ways that demonstrate conclusively that there are important and significant feedback loops in the process: nursing education is now so constructed that it both reflects and structures new ways of conceiving the profession. Nursing instructors bring their experience on the floor to the classrooms where they teach, training future nurses who will nurture even more changes. One of the most important recent changes in nursing education falls under this rubric: nursing students are very much an active part of the process of their own education.

Student-centered learning has made significant gains over the past decade in nursing programs, as it has in other professional programs as well. Some of the ways in which students have become more responsible for—and influential in—their own education are reflected in how credentialing of nursing and pre-nursing programs is carried out (Keating, 2010, p. 320).

Student-Centered Learning in Nursing Programs

The concept of different learning styles has made considerable inroads in many American and other Western educational systems. This awareness helps create systems of learning that allow as many students as possible to benefit from the same curriculum. When an instructor is capable of teaching the same concept in a number of different ways—by using different educational technologies, for example, or drawing on students to help others who share the same learning style—all members of the class, and eventually the profession as a whole, will benefit.

Indeed, the multicultural state of the nursing profession can be profitably incorporated into one of the key tools used in developing, assessing, and evaluating curricula. Attention to learning styles supports a more inclusive and effective educational environment, particularly in programs that serve diverse student populations.

Accreditation as Professional Autonomy

It was not long ago that nursing program accreditation was treated as a stepchild of the broader accreditation process, falling awkwardly between the accreditation of medical schools and that of universities and colleges. Now it is a fully recognized process in its own right—a clear acknowledgment that nurses must have significant autonomy over the process of educating themselves, and that accreditation is one of the fundamental mechanisms through which this autonomy is achieved.

While this may seem like a relatively arcane aspect of academic life with little bearing on nursing practice, accreditation now encompasses a substantial degree of international cooperation. As more and more nurses practicing in high-income nations come from developing countries, there is a growing need for international cooperation in setting educational goals and in creating a philosophy of nursing that reflects the complex cultural negotiations required in a truly student-centered system—one in which students are learning in all corners of the world.