Critical thinking and disposition skills among nurse educators in Jordanian universities: Perception, description, achievement and experience

Abstract

Critical thinking is an expected educational process and outcome of the Jordanian strategy to develop nursing education. This descriptive-explorative study examined the critical thinking experience of 100 nurse educators working in six Jordanian Universities purposively-selected to reflect a representative sample. A survey questionnaire consisting three parts was used in this study; the California Critical thinking Skill Test (CCTST), the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI), and the experience survey (ES). The CCTST measured critical thinking skills and the ES asked the participants to rate their practice of critical thinking. The ES included a qualitative component that invited nurse educators to describe a situation, which illustrated their experience of critical thinking in practice. The CCTDI measured disposition towards critical thinking. The overall response rate was 73% (n=73) and 25% (n=25) for the qualitative part. The results of this study demonstrated that nurse educators had a positive disposition towards applying critical thinking in their practice; yet, their scores were not high on the skill test. These results indicated that they might require further professional development to support their work in enhancing critical thinking. Furthermore, age, gender, degree and educational experience of educational concepts were found to affect the results on the three parts of the survey. For the qualitative part, thematic analysis was performed and five key themes were identified. These were analysis, logical reasoning, evaluation, inference and reflexivity. This study suggests that nurse educators have positive inclination towards and high perceived practices of critical thinking.