Clinical Practices Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Clinical Practices Paper - Essay Example It should not be misconstrued that one type of learning must be followed to help every student learn. Central to learning styles for any student is to find those models of teaching that work most effectively for the individuals learning style so that they become more instantly ready to understand the coursework and do well on a test. The research shows that there are many methods currently being used. There are several basic ways that a student must learn different types of material. As an example, some pieces of knowledge must be memorized. This would include lists of facts or aspects of the human body and body systems that are important to know when you are working with patients. Azzarello (2007) points out that there are three stages of knowledge that students must develop. In the first stage, the declarative stage of learning, students find these lists and common knowledge important. They must not only learn the material, but be able to apply the knowledge to their clinical studies. In stage two, called the procedural stage, students must take the knowledge they have and apply it to situations that may not have come up in other settings. With this knowledge, they must use critical thinking and problem solving to add to the knowledge they have about the situation. In the last stage, which the author calls structural knowledge, a student must understand how procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge relate to one another. This basically means that students will need to understand an organized way of bringing the knowledge together (Azzarello, p. 3). The author suggests that in order to understand what students are learning structurally that Pathfinder scaling techniques can be used. A study was conducted to see whether this was feasible and found that it was one way that students could be evaluated. This is a stronger way to evaluate than concept mapping and most students in the study thought some of the work was