Storytelling as Pedagogy: Perceptions of Nurse Educators

Karen Houston

Advisor: Lesley Smith, PhD, School of Integrative Studies

Committee Members: John O'Connor, Kelly Schrum

Research Hall, #402
April 08, 2015, 12:00 PM to 09:00 AM

Abstract:

This research study examines how nursing educators integrate storytelling as pedagogy into the teaching of nursing students in both the classroom and clinical areas. At present, there are limited research studies about the effectiveness of storytelling pedagogy. This research will begin to fill the evidence gap for nurse educators as they prepare to meet the challenges of preparing contemporary nursing students for professional practice in the midst of the transformation in health care today. The main objectives of this study explores the use of storytelling in nursing education by considering how and when stories are used; the inter-relationship of course content with storytelling as a primary teaching strategy; how storytelling influences nursing professional practice; and if it can lead to enhanced learning outcomes for nursing students. A phenomenological design is selected to explore storytelling pedagogy because of its potential to use scholarly inquiry to obtain in-depth responses from participants that reflect their beliefs and personal experiences. Data collection consists of in-depth telephone interviews with responses from 21 nurse educators who have direct experience using storytelling pedagogy in their courses from both private and public learning institutions. Interview data is being analyzed with a qualitative approach to identify themes reflected from all collected data.