In this essay, I will discuss the process of learning, learning styles (LS) and the learning cycle to see if understanding them is valuable for student nurses. I will identify and compare my dominant learning style with other LS. Then, I will discuss my dominant style with its strengths and weaknesses for my learning and development. After that, I will identify my weakest learning style, and how I can progressively develop this style to enhance my learning.
Honey and Mumford (1992: p 2) claimed that learning is about gaining knowledge and developing new skills. People are able to learn by being ‘taught’ through formal education. Yet, people can also learn from everyday experiences through trial and error.
Also cognitive psychologist, Jean Piaget (McLeod, S. A, 2009) acknowledged how young children learn. Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development:
Sensorimotor – This stage affects children from zero to two. They will understand the environment through their basic senses. The child will learn about object permanence.
Proportional – This stage affects children from two to seven and they are developing their language skills and creativity. Children at this stage are only able to see though their own point of view (Coyne, Timmins and Neill, 2010:p 37) This is known as Egocentrism.
Concrete Operational – This stage affects children from seven to eleven and understand conservation and reversibility.
Formal Operational – This stage affects children from eleven onwards. They can develop skills such as logical thought, rational reasoning and problem solving. (McLeod, 2010)
These stages are known as the developmental stage theory. It demonstrates how knowledge grows and how skills are develop and used.
Every student nurse ...
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... style. This research supported my discussion to determine the value for student nurses to know their learning style.
Steven P. Hams. (2000). A gut feeling? Intuition and critical care nursing. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing. 16 (5), 310 - 318.
The author reviewed numerous studies about using intuition as a nurse and its reliability whilst giving critical care. At the start, the author discussed about how intuition helps nurses to make good decisions with relevant literature. However, this topic caused a great debate with different theorists to determine if intuition is beneficial in nursing practice. Yet, nurses show effective practice when their emotions are incorporated with their expert decisions. Eventually, the author states that intuition is a reliable source in nursing practice. This conclusion supports my decision to make develop my intuitive skills.
Sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years old) – Children begin to make sense of the world around them based on their interaction with their physical environment. Reality begins to be defined.
During a child's second and seventh year, he or she is considered to be in the preoperational stage. Piaget stated that during this stage, the child has not yet mastered the ability of mental operations. The child in the preoperational stage still does not have the ability to think through actions (Woolfolk, A., 2004). Children in this stage are considered to be egocentric, meaning they assume others share their points of view (Woolfolk, A. 2004). Because of egocentricism, children in this stage engage in collective monologues, in which each child is talking, but not interacting with the other children (Woolfolk, A. 2004). Another important aspect of the preoperational stage is the acquisition of the skill of conservation. Children understand that the amount of something remains the same even if its appearance changes (Woolfolk, A., 2004). A child in the preoperational stage would not be able to perform the famous Piagetian conservation problem of liquid and volume, because he or she has not yet developed reversible thinking – "thinking backward, from the end to the beginning" (Woolfolk, A., 33).
Jean Piaget, a Swiss child psychologist, is well known for his four stages of mental growth theory (1). In the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2, the child is concerned with gaining motor control and getting familiar with physical objects. Then from age 2 to 7, the child develops verbal skills, which is called the preoperational stage. In the concrete operational stage the child deals with abstract thinking from age 7 to 12. The final stage called the formal operational stage ends at age 15 and this is when the child learns to reason logically and systematically. (1)
In this essay I will be discussing the importance of understanding learning styles for student nurses. I will also be focusing on the learning cycle and learning style using the Honey and Mumford 80 questionnaire. I look into the details of how learning style helps students to understand the importance of recognising one’s learning style preference. I will also provide an understanding of learning and learning theories and discuss my own dominant learning style and how I aim to deal with my weaknesses to progress well in the nursing programme.
Nursing takes on a different form of learning that reflects several different aspects and abilities that encompass a wide range of skills and forms the ways of knowing in nursing. The article, “The Fundamental Patterns of Knowing in Nursing,” incorporates multiple theories associated with the learning patterns in nursing. It is a review of literature that helps identify and understand the knowledge practiced by nurses and to better understand the nursing profession. The purpose of the paper was to evaluate the expectations of learning within the nursing realm based on the four areas of nursing that include, empirics, esthetics, personal knowledge and ethics.
In the first stage, sensorimotor, the child starts to build an understanding of its world by synchronising sensory encounters with physical actions. They become capable of symbolic thought and start to achieve object permanence.
Every nurse determines the way they will practice in the beginning of their career. More than likely these roles and values are created and sparked in nursing school. As time goes on, nurses dig deeper and establish who they are in their new role as a professional. When the metaparadigm of nursing and personal philosophy coincide with one another, individualized concepts, care, and professionalism are achieved and delivered in multiple settings. From a personal perspective, these concepts were established and developed very early in my career. Maintaining and establishing myself as a nurse remains a top priority ten years later in my practice.
3. Concrete operations · Children continue to learn through their experiences with real objects. · They access information (using language) to make sense of their immediate and wider environment. 4. Formal operations · Children and adults learn to make use of abstract thinking.
Children’s from this stage remain egocentric for the most part but to begin to internalize representations. (Piaget, 1999). Concrete operational stage is children to age seven to eleven. They develop the ability to categorize objects and how they relate to one another. A child’s become more mastered in math by adding and subtracting. If a child eat one brownie out of a jar containing six. By doing the math there would be 5 brownies left by counting the remaining brownies left in the jar because they are able to model the jar in their
The Sensorimotor stage – this stage occurs when the child is born till when he/she is two years old.
In the first stage sensorimotor, which occurs from birth to the age of two is the time in an infant’s life when the child basically deals with what is presented to him. They learn about physical objects and are concerned with motor skills and the consequences of some of their actions. (Thomson, Meggit 1997 P.107). During this stage children will learn the concept of object permanence. This is where an object will continue to exist even if it is out of sight. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P.48)
Piaget believed in four stages of cognitive development in which new schema, the framework for organizing information, are acquired. They include the sensorimotor stage which last until a child is roughly two years old. In this stage a child learns about the world around them by using their fives senses for exploration. This stage leads to an understanding of object permanence.
During this stage, children will be building up their incidents or encounters through adaptation and slowly move on to the next stage of the development as they are not able to have logical or transformational ideas in the preoperational stage (Mcleod, 2009).
The first developmental state is the sensorimotor stage, which occurs between the ages of zero and two years old. This is where concepts are built through interactions with adults. Infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions. The second stage, the preoperational, occurs from two to seven years old. At this stage, children’s symbolic thought increases, but they do not possess operational thought. Children need to relate to concrete objects and people, but they do not understand abstract concepts. The third stage is concrete operations and occurs from seven to eleven years old. Children are able to develop logical structures and can understand abstractions. The formal operational stage, the final stage, occurs from eleven to fifteen. At this stage, thought is more abstract, idealistic, and logical. Children’s cognitive structures are similar to adults and children are able to use reasoning.
Piaget’s Stage Theory in my eyes was four key stages of development marked by shifts in how they understand the world. To me Piaget’s theories had a major impact on the theory and practice of education.