Deryn Thompson
University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000 and Womens and Children Health Network North Adelaide 5006, Australia
Title: Learning principles utilisation by nurses and health professionals in parent education practice: a scoping review of the literature
Biography
Biography: Deryn Thompson
Abstract
Background: Parents and parents require considerable knowledge, practical and problem-solving skills to optimise their child.’s care. Nurses facilitate the learning process, but there is little evidence in the literature of nurse’ awareness of how people learn, in their parent-education practice. Despite education and cognitive psychology literature establishing the importance of implementing learning principles for developing problem-solving and decision-making capabilities, there is a paucity of such research in health-education literature. The research aims to explore, through a scoping literature review, what learning principles inform parent-education practice.
Aim: A scoping review of literature explored and identified the learning principles health professionals reported, implemented and evaluated in parent-education practice.
Method: Marzano et al.’s Five Dimensions of Learning provided the lens to identify learning principles used. Arksey & O’Malley’ framework guided the review and analysis.
Results: Of 2692 articles located, 89 were suitable for full-text analysis, including 10 practice standards. Only 16 papers utilized all 5 learning principles and evaluated parent learning. Thematic analysis identified a dearth of descriptions of learning principles use in practice, varying conceptualization of ‘learning’, divergent learning expectations of health professionals and parents and learning assumed from clinical outcome measures.
Conclusion: The findings suggest there is a lack of awareness by HPs of what ‘learning’ in parent education encompasses. The review highlights the need to explore what learning principles nurses are using in parent education practice and what parents expect to learn. These findings will inform the next phase of the research: the action research cycles of a bigger project.