Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• Most students successfully made links to science learning or nursing practice, rather than to both.
• Students were able to make more links to knowledge and practice when they were responding to more concrete concepts.
• The new assessment tool enabled assessment of all aspects of competence, including the contribution of student attitudes, values and abilities to knowledge and skills. These were the building blocks for further development of science-informed competence by the student nurses.
• Findings from the focus group interview and questionnaire suggested that most students understood that the assessment tool had been designed to link to a ‘nursing perspective’ and put them ‘in a nursing frame of mind’.
• Overall the findings showed students did understand that the items in the assessment tool referred to linking their science learning to future learning, nursing practice and their goal of becoming a nurse.

Key Recommendations

The project made the following key recommendations for future practice and further research:

Changing the assessment timeframes | Changing the timeframes associated with the assessment by decreasing the wait time for students prior to the assessment and increasing the time allocated per Station.

Modifying the assessment questions | Modifying the wording and format of the questions in the assessment by explicitly requesting responses which enable students to link their science learning to nursing practice and changing the format of the answer sheet to allow enough space for more complex responses.

Further research with the research participants | Further research with the research participants in order to collect data from returning students which may provide worthwhile findings on the consequential validity of the assessment tool.

Further research with the next cohort | Further longitudinal research with this and the next cohort of students would be beneficial in examining developing competency growth towards the entry level of a registered nurse and to investigate how effective the assessment tool was in linking forward to future learning in different contexts.