THE EFFECT OF TELLING EXPERIENTIAL AND FANTASY STORIES ON LEARNING A PSYCHOMOTOR NURSING SKILL.
Contributors: Adelphi University.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 191
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Educational Psychology.
Description: Teaching psychomotor skills to nursing students is an essential component of nursing education. This experimental study examined the effect of employing storytelling when teaching the skill of application of a sterile dressing. The sample consisted of ninety-eight associate degree nursing students who were about to enter a nursing program and had no experience in nursing or performance of the skill in this study.

Theoretical support for the use of the story to teach psychomotor skills to adults was found in several areas of the literature. Story memory theory, or story grammars, offered evidence that the well-formed story is recalled better than one which lacks essential grammatical components (Rumelhart, 1975). The literature related to imagery and storytelling suggested that the images produced in the mind of the listener might very well provide the learner with the experience of actually "doing" the psychomotor task. The anthropological and psychological literature also offered evidence that the story may impact on the learner in an unconscious manner, making the skill to be learned more memorable.

For the purpose of this study, skill learning was defined as the cognitive ability to recall the steps or behaviors needed for skill performance, the confidence a student feels related to the skill, and the actual performance of the skill. It was hypothesized that individuals hearing a story in addition to seeing the skill demonstrated would score higher in all three areas than those who had the skill demonstrated without a story. In addition, it was hypothesized that those hearing an experiential type story would score higher on these three measures than those hearing the fantasy story.

Analysis of variance was performed for each of the dependent variables. Of the nine research hypotheses, one was supported and five were in the hypothesized direction. Storytelling was related to higher scores on the cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects of skill. A statistically significant difference existed between the skill performance of the group hearing the fantasy story and the other groups.

It was concluded that storytelling shows a great deal of promise as a strategy for psychomotor skill learning.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: B, page: 0702.

Thesis (PH.D.)--ADELPHI UNIVERSITY, 1987.

School code: 0001.