CURRICULAR APPROACHES TO ETHICAL INSTRUCTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL REASONING IN BACCALAUREATE NURSING STUDENTS.
Contributors: Catholic University of America.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 228
Subjects: Education, Curriculum and Instruction.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Although nursing requires skill in resolving moral and ethical dilemmas and problems, nursing curricula have only recently included ethical courses and content. This descriptive survey (1) described four schools' characteristics, teaching strategies, and factors that determined curricular ethics content; and (2) identified the relationships between the schools' curricula, student and teacher attitudes toward curricular ethics and students' level of moral reasoning and ethical decision making.

Eighty senior nursing students, 23 faculty, and five administrators from the respective baccalaureate programs participated in the study.

Seven instruments were used in the study. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) measured the level of principled moral development, and Judgments About Nursing Decisions (JAND) measured the knowledge and valuation of professional judgments. The remaining five instruments were developed for use in this study and obtained information on students' ethics education background, students' and teachers' perceptions about curricular ethics, ethical content and teachers' satisfaction with its teaching time, teaching methods, and a semi-structured administrative interview.

This was a nonequivalent group, descriptive survey. Profile analysis, MANOVA, discriminant analysis, and canonical and Pearson correlations were used to determine students' performance on the dependent variables.

There were no differences in the level of moral reasoning nor in the knowledge and valuing of ethics in nursing situations between students exposed to (a) an integrated or discrete (separate) course strategy for teaching ethics, and (b) to the systematic or sporadic integration of ethics. The teaching methods that provided the greatest opportunities for enhancement of moral development and ethical decision making were either used sparingly or not at all. The lack of teacher preparation to teach ethics, absence of teacher role models in the application of ethics, and limited curricula space for including ethical content contributed to these findings.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2370.

Thesis (ED.D.)--THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, 1989.

School code: 0043.