Effects of a nursing literature reading course on promoting critical thinking in two-year nursing program students

Critical thinking is essential for professional nursing practice. Promoting critical thinking with teaching strategies has been a focus of nursing education and nursing research. Reading and writing assignments are teaching strategies for fostering critical thinking ability. We developed a course with the emphasis on critical reading and writing. The purposes of this study were to explore the effect of the course and teaching strategies on promoting critical thinking and to understand the learning experience and perception of nursing students as part of the course assessment plan. Quasi-experimental design and purposive sampling were used. 170 students of a two-year nursing program were grouped into an experimental and a control group depending on whether or not they took the course. The change in critical thinking ability was evaluated and determined based on performance in an article critique test before and after the course. Data was collected with an assessment tool developed for the purposes of the research and was analyzed with descriptive statistics, paired t-test, and two-factor analysis of variance with repeated measures and content analysis. The findings were: (1) The scores on the critique test at the end of the course in both groups were significantly higher than before the course (p<.001). The improvement in score of the experimental group, however, was significantly higher than that of the control group (p<.001). (2) Changes in thinking pattern and learning attitude, as well as a feeling of growth and achievement, were found in content analysis of students' self-evaluation of their learning experience and perception. Critical thinking skills were applied while learning the course. The results not only provide evidence to support the positive effect of reading and writing assignments on critical thinking ability but also confirm the teaching and learning activity design for the course.