NR 524 Week 2 Curriculum Philosophy Statement Example

Curriculum Philosophy Statement: Four Beliefs About How Our Students Learn, Each Written So a Later Decision About Sequence or Assessment Would Come Out Differently Without It

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 524: Curriculum Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Curriculum Philosophy Statement: Four Beliefs About How Our Students Learn, Each Written So a Later Decision About Sequence or Assessment Would Come Out Differently Without It

Purpose of the Statement

This statement sets out the beliefs about learning that underpin the associate degree nursing curriculum at our rural community college. It is written for the faculty who will revise the curriculum over the coming year, the college curriculum committee that approves changes, and our accreditor. A philosophy statement is often a list of values that could belong to any program. This one is deliberately short. It contains four beliefs, each chosen because a specific decision later in the revision, about the order of courses, the placement of content or the way learning is assessed, would come out differently if the faculty did not hold it. Each belief names that decision.

Belief 1: Our Students Arrive With Care Experience That Should Be Used, Not Overwritten

Most of our students are adults who have worked as nursing assistants, cared for a parent or grandparent at home, or both. Many have already sat with someone who was dying. We believe learning is stronger when it connects new knowledge to what students already know from that experience, and when faculty ask students to examine what that experience taught them, including what it taught them wrongly.

The decision it will justify: placing structured reflection on students' own caregiving experience in the first semester, before clinical rotations, and returning to it in the final semester. Without this belief, first-semester time would go entirely to new content.

Belief 2: Difficult Conversations Are Learned by Rehearsal Before Performance

Some nursing skills can be learned by watching and then doing. Others, such as telling a family that their mother is dying or responding to a patient who asks whether they are going to die, carry too much risk to be learned first with real patients. We believe these skills are learned best by rehearsal in a safe setting, with feedback, before students face them in clinical practice. Reviews of end-of-life teaching strategies in prelicensure programs have described simulation and experiential methods alongside lecture (Lippe & Carter, 2015).

The decision it will justify: requiring a simulated end-of-life conversation before students attend a hospice or palliative clinical experience, rather than offering simulation as an optional extra.

Belief 3: Concepts Should Return at Increasing Depth

We believe students learn complex concepts best when they meet them more than once, at increasing depth, in different settings. Comfort, pain, grief and family communication, for example, should appear in the first semester at an introductory level, return in medical-surgical courses in relation to chronic and serious illness, and reach full depth in the final semester's complex care course. A single lecture, however good, does not build competence that a graduate can use at a bedside at 0300.

The decision it will justify: threading end-of-life content across three courses at introductory, developing and mastery levels, rather than concentrating it in one unit or leaving it where it now sits, in one first-semester lecture.

Belief 4: What We Do Not Assess, Students Will Not Prioritize

Students manage heavy workloads, often while working and caring for families. We believe they reasonably spend their effort on what is assessed. Content that is taught but never assessed signals to students that it is optional. For a program outcome to be real, at least one course must assess it in a way that counts toward progression.

The decision it will justify: adding assessed end-of-life competencies, drawn from the national undergraduate palliative care competencies (Ferrell et al., 2016), to the clinical evaluation tool for the complex care course. Without this belief, the faculty might add content without adding assessment, and the gap would persist in a new form.

Where the Beliefs Come From

The four beliefs are not invented for this program; each rests on work the faculty found persuasive. The first and second draw on Tanner's research-based model of clinical judgment, in which the background and experience a nurse carries into an encounter influence what gets noticed first, and which gives reflection a central place in learning from practice (Tanner, 2006). Our students' caregiving histories are exactly the kind of background Tanner describes, and reflection is how that background becomes useful rather than misleading.

The third and fourth draw on the move toward competency-based education in the national standards for professional nursing education, which ask programs to define competencies, build them across the curriculum and assess them (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). Although those standards are written for baccalaureate and graduate programs, their logic, that a competency is only real if it is developed over time and assessed, applies equally to an associate degree program preparing nurses for the same bedsides. Naming these sources in the statement lets the curriculum committee judge the beliefs on their grounds, not only on the faculty's say-so.

Beliefs Deliberately Omitted

Caring, holism and respect for persons do not appear here, not because the faculty reject them but because they would not change any decision in this revision; every program claims them. It also does not take a position on concept-based versus systems-based curriculum design, which the faculty will debate separately. Keeping the statement to four beliefs makes it possible to check, at the end of the revision, whether each one actually shaped a decision.

How the Statement Will Be Used

When the faculty propose a change in sequence, content or assessment during the revision, the proposal will name which belief it rests on. A proposal that rests on none of the four will need to argue for a new belief or be set aside. At the end of the year, the faculty will review which beliefs were cited and which were not. A belief never cited will be removed from the statement, because a philosophy that shapes no decision is decoration, and the curriculum committee should be able to see the difference. The first test of the statement comes within weeks, when the faculty map where each program outcome is taught; every empty cell on that map will be judged against these four beliefs.

Taken together, the four beliefs are a small set of commitments the faculty can be asked to honor. That is their purpose: to make later choices explainable to students, colleagues and the committee that approves them.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/essentials

Ferrell, B., Malloy, P., Mazanec, P., & Virani, R. (2016). CARES: AACN's new competencies and recommendations for educating undergraduate nursing students to improve palliative care. Journal of Professional Nursing, 32(5), 327-333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.07.002

Lippe, M. P., & Carter, P. (2015). End-of-life care teaching strategies in prelicensure nursing education: An integrative review. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 17(1), 31-39. https://doi.org/10.1097/NJH.0000000000000118

Tanner, C. A. (2006). Thinking like a nurse: A research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(6), 204-211. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20060601-04