Teaching Methods Through The Application Of Different Theories In Education

Description

Discuss the teaching methods through the application of amalgam of different theories can really be helpful in the process of developing teaching and learning methods in education?

The following essay is reflective essay which is based on events I have learnt from my practice area where I was induced as a learner. It briefly describes the Learning and Teaching style and it’s sustaining theories. It also analyses the learning style adopted by me which has influenced my clinical practice and also evaluate its efficiency during the event and also devise a plan to develop and optimise the education of a student nurse in such a similar situation. The following assignment was based on Gibb’s cycle which consist of six steps i.e. feelings, description, evaluation, analysis of the incident, action plan conclusion (Royal college of nursing society of orthopaedic and trauma nursing, 2006). 

This placement involved the objective to learn about the proper technique of administering pre filled subcutaneous injection to a patient. The practice of administering it had already been taught on a dummy earlier. While following the process I was cautious enough to follow the teacher but not confident to do it myself and therefore decided to follow her closely. I had also discussed my apprehension with one of my senior staff’s. Therefore my senior had started explaining it to the patient one step at a time, the patient even requested the staff to administer it in the upper arm instead of the abdomen (Royal College of Nursing Midwifery & Fertility Nursing Forum, 2012). The staff was kind enough to explain the reason behind it and then asked me to administer the next patient, the injection while following the same steps. But my confidence had still been lagging due to the lack of knowledge of explanation I had to give if the next patient had requested the same. My interest had grown in the area of injection sites and the reason behind it was my inability to judge the area of administering an injection. I conveyed my concerns to the mentor that my request was due to the insufficient knowledge I had about administering an injection and therefore I wanted to gain some more knowledge before practising it. My mentor had happily allocated me enough time to learn and gain knowledge about administering injections from books and articles and initiated giving SC injections under the guidance of my mentor. The feedback was very good from my mentor and was appreciated for the outstanding performance I had shown and thus it reflected even in my work (Royal College of Nursing Midwifery & Fertility Nursing Forum, 2011).

Though now I feel that the advice of my mentor was not enough to excel in this procedure. Being a student nurse I had grown interest in administering injections but this event made me think that I have to become more resolute in the understanding of the procedure and therefore needed to gain strength and therefore started more research on the in order to learn more before initiating the procedure of administering injections professionally (Society information - Royal college of nursing society of orthopaedic and trauma nursing, 2004). It was fortunate for me that my mentor was considerate enough to understand my situation and helped me to learn more about the procedure. Though working in real clinical environment is beneficial but it has its own challenges. It is the combination of the focus and professional practice of one self to achieve success in such situations. My motivation had been through the active participation in the act and its consequent success. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs plays in an important role in the motivation of human self-esteem which is the most important element that should be considered in the learning of any new trade (Royal College of Nursing Fertility Nursing Forum, 2014).

Feelings

The event had been very positive experience as it had taught me the process of administering SC injection. The realism of the learning environment and patient in real clinical environment had made the task more professional. The process had made me more conscious and focused as the dummy had been replaced by a real patient. The process had taught me more than I could have imagined. The learning technique of mine had included self-observation of my mentor as well as voracious reading about the topic of administering injection. Every person have their own learning techniques and this was mine which had proved to be very effective. The time allocated to me by my mentor for the task had been the most helpful as well as the continuous encouragement of my mentor had made me successful in learning the techniques of administering injection (Royal College of Nursing Complementary Therapies in Nursing Forum, 2004).

The biggest challenge in clinical nursing is practising live in front of the patient. The council for Nursing and Midwifery (NMC) have made certain code of conduct which are to be followed by the nurses in real situations every time they are at work. On of such codes states that it is the responsibility of the nurses to explain the patient about the effects of the medication they are being administered before administering the medications, the ways of administering is also includes the explanation (Pourhosein Gilakjani, 2011). The code also states that if the patients have any doubts they need to be cleared, it is the duty of the nurses to clear any such doubts. In order to practice this code the learning styles of the learners had to be changed and therefore the facilitator had to be more adaptable according to the situations. Being the learner I had also reviewed that just observing the procedure was not enough to gain the required competence. Even for the facilitator also new styles of teaching methods had been devised according to the learners learning capabilities in the clinical setting (Pourhosein Gilakjani, 2011).

The techniques of learning is very vital in the healthcare industry which aids the student nurses to acquire information skills and practical skills as well in order to become a nurse. The course of BSc with honours in pre-registration nursing has lead the students to the achievement of the important consequences of knowledge and to assess the practice while following the code i.e. the standards of conduct, ethics and performance for the nurses and the midwives i.e. the NMC while being in the limitations of the individuals legislation, competence, knowledge, consistency, sphere of professional practice which should be related to the nursing practice. The nursing students who are interested in taking up this course are provided with wide types and ranges of placements locations which have a professional learning environment so that the students can achieve the best level of required confidence in original practice. The education provided to the nurses in the training period or while placements in training is very important as it is a practicality based job which requires development of very accurate skills before initiation of their professional practice (Patterson, 2008). Therefore the maximum time of the syllabus prepared for the training of the nursing students i.e. 50%, have been allocated towards the practice of the students practically. This creates a unique opportunity for the students to acquire the accurate skills required to practice their learning in real life on a real person. Therefore the practice of providing individual mentors to each of the students which was started by the Royal College of Nursing, so that the mentor can perform the role of a teacher, supervisor, assessor for the student to properly guide them and it is the responsibility of the mentor to guide the student towards a better understanding of the skills and the techniques required to be a professional nurse (Pai et al., 2002). The mentor has to assess the proper technique to make the student under them learn as the procedures of every individual student is different and therefore make them learn by the implementation of the right technique. According to the NMC or the Nursery and the Midwifery Council the mentor has to fulfil some specific standards before their registration as a mentor. A special training schedule known as the mentor preparation program has been developed which the mentor has to pass in order to be a mentor. The person preparing to be a mentor can also be approved by a comparable program accredited by the AEI which meets the NMC mentor requirements of the test of skills, knowledge and the competence which has to meet the outcomes defined by the code (Nursing Education, 2014).

Evaluation

This implementation has provided the required push to the learning and the teaching methodology in the higher education which has been an important aspect of the nursing studies. There are a number of theories which have aided in providing a logical framework of the integrated subject matters and the related principles that have been helpful in predicting the learning techniques of people in general. I have been able to realise through these theories that the learning style I am adopted to is known Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic after answering the 30 questions that are designed to assess the learning styles of any individual (Mathews et al., 2014). The visual style is designed for the people who make use of their sight and learn accordingly to improve their learnings from visual displays. The authors Braungart and Braungart have argued in their book that the people who are more focused on the thing which is directly in front of the viewer, their mode of learning is termed as Behaviourist learning theory or better known as the SR model which is explained as the behaviourists view of learning which has been the product of the responses and the stimulus of every individual (Lejeune et al., 2009).

It was important for me to change my learning styles into the form of Perspectives and Paradigms which is the successful process of bridging the theoretical and the practical knowledge in education. Many studies have recommended that to understand the theories of very individuals learning techniques that is there are some basic principle, weakness and advantages that are to be followed which provides the learners  the options to combine and choose the most efficient learning techniques that they can benefit from considering some specific events under consideration. The students also have an important role to play in the learning system by extracting out the most from the practice placement they have been provided and therefor provide feedbacks to the college learning system to provide their experience on the technique that has been used, whether it was helpful or not in the learning process of the student (Lejeune et al., 2009).

The learning process implemented and the assessment in the practice placements of the knowledge by the student is on of the most important part of the nursing program. There is no appropriate and relevant opportunity in order to learn about the practice placement techniques. The need for experience of the students in different placement centres is very important for the students so that they can gain the ability to compete in the nursing industry and hence register themselves in the NMC council. Therefore the students are able to make use of their placements which make use of diversified learning environment techniques which has integrated the theoretical knowledge of the course with the practical placement learning techniques to create the best university education learning technique that can be provided in recent times. The practice document assessment (PAD) is used to continuously assess the performance of the students accurately and in a comprehensive format for the further development of the clinical practice. The assessment through the PAD has revealed that the management of proper medication for the patients is also one of the important skills that has to be acquired by the nursing students, the administration of the SC injection is one of the important components of this process (Isableu et al., 2011). The students are to be developed in such ways that they are able to validate the performance, knowledge and also the professional as well as personal awareness so that their behaviour in times of need remains focused towards providing the knowledge of elementary pharmacology, the therapeutic effects of the medicines, the process of acting of the medicines as well as the therapeutic interactions of the medicines in the body. The students of nursing should be aware of the routes and the techniques in which the medicines are absorbed in our body, how it is metabolised and also the interactions as well as the reaction of the medicine on the body. The governing body for the clinical operations known as the clinical governance is responsible for the improvement of the qualities in healthcare services as well as safeguarding the standard of care to keep it high by creating the environment where excellence in clinical practice can be attained (Hanlon-Pena and Quaal, 2011).

Analysis

The learning theories helped to fulfil all the requirements mentioned in the preceding paragraphs which had helped me to achieve the skills and knowledge I have acquired due to these techniques. It is very important for the mentors and the facilitators to learn the process of the student nurses as a learner themselves so that they can be more effective. The learning preferences of every individual varies from person to person even though majority of the healthcare professionals prefer the visual learning style, it is the job of the mentor to understand the students learning style. Conventionally the SR theory was the most popular as well as the simplest theory in the practice of nursing earlier. It has focused only on visual components and in form of the behaviourist view which is the product of the response and the stimulus condition (Chan et al., 2006). The procedure to be shown was carried out by the mentor and the student could have just viewed it. It required a lot of motivation to strengthen the habit of the administering of the SC injection and repeat the process. Some theories have said that to reward the positive reinforcement would increase the chances of the response to have increased if the situations are similar.

But being a professional only on theory is not justified. In order to commit to the NMC the student nurses have to prepare themselves with full competence of whatever they behave learned.  So the conventional theory has to be changed (Brain and Roberts, 2008).

The second theory which was chosen was Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic and the cognitive learning theories which stresses more on the processes that goes inside the mind of the learner. The cognitive theories are also made up of some sub theories which is based  in the education of a human being by changing the way in which a person’s cognition are altered like memory, perception, structuring information and processing thought. It also helps the person to remain active and think with its cognitive abilities while processing information to process it better. NMC has registered the cognitive abilities to be as important as the professional abilities. The cognitive and the behaviourist theory makers don’t use rewards but creates the tension which motivates the learners to learn. If a person has better understanding of the ways of learning then it automatically influences them to process better and transfer better information. The learning theory taught by the mentors and facilitators if is not clear to the students then there is no benefit of teaching. Therefore this process was a breakthrough in the techniques of teaching in universities of nursing (Baird, 2010).

Conclusion

It is very important to learn the clinical styles of every individuals learning and teaching techniques under an environment. I came to the conclusion that teaching methods through the application of amalgam of different theories can really be helpful in the process of developing teaching and learning methods in education. This will help the staffs to be skill full in utilising their knowledge in the better treatment of the patients and keep them well.

References

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