The use of deliberative discussion as a teaching strategy to enhance the critical thinking abilities of freshman nursing students

The ability to critically think is an essential quality needed in today’s nurses. Nurse educators are challenged to employ teaching methods that provide nursing students with the opportunity to practice and enhance their critical thinking skills. Deliberative discussion is one such teaching method that invites participants to engage in a shared inquiry regarding public issues. The purpose of this pretest-posttest control group experimental study was to investigate the effects of using the deliberative discussion method teaching strategy to enhance the critical thinking abilities of Freshman Nursing students. All Freshman Nursing students in a baccalaureate nursing program at a small, private university were invited to participate (N = 71) and completed pretest and posttest data were collected on 23 nursing students. Participants were randomly assigned to attend three deliberative discussion sessions over a 13 week period or to the control group. Using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, the researcher found that there was no difference in critical thinking scores between the deliberative discussion group (n = 7) and the control group (n = 16). The quality and depth of students’ critical thinking abilities during the deliberative discussions did not increase from session one to session three. However, there was evidence that critical thinking did occur in two out of the three sessions. Findings have implications for nurse educators to help them develop insight into the usefulness of deliberative discussions as a means to foster critical thinking in nursing students. Further, future longitudinal research is needed to study changes in critical thinking over longer periods of time using the deliberative discussion method.