Meaningful learning: theoretical support for concept-based teaching

Novice nurses’ inability to transfer classroom knowledge to the bedside has been implicated in adverse patient outcomes, including death. Concept-based teaching is a pedagogy found to improve knowledge transfer. Concept-based teaching emanates from a constructivist paradigm of teaching and learning and can be implemented most effectively when the underlying theory and principles are applied. Ausubel’s theory of meaningful learning and its construct of substantive knowledge integration provides a model to help educators to understand, implement, and evaluate concept-based teaching. Contemporary findings from the fields of cognitive psychology, human development, and neurobiology provide empirical evidence of the relationship between concept-based teaching, meaningful learning, and knowledge transfer. This article describes constructivist principles and meaningful learning as they apply to nursing pedagogy.