THE EFFECT OF CONCEPT MAPPING TEACHING METHOD ON CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS OF NURSING STUDENTS

Student's thinking skill is always a complex issue in education, and nowadays it
has taken a more serious condition because conventional methods of teaching such as lectures as the
dominant method used in higher education system is a passive style which ignores critical thinking.
This study was performed to investigate the effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skills of the
nursing students.
Materials & Methods: In a quasi-experimental study with two groups, pre-test post-test design, 40
nursing students of the third semester were selected through convenient sampling method, and they
were randomly divided into two experiment and control groups. Students were trained by using
concept maps in the experimental group for six sessions of two hours, and traditional methods in the
control group for five sessions of two hours respectively. The statistical analysis was done by SPSS
software version 19. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, independent t-test, and paired t-test
were used.
Results: The results showed that the use of concept mapping method of teaching, significantly
increased post test mean scores in the experimental group (p=0/000). Comparing to the control group,
after applying concept mapping, the mean scores of critical thinking in the experimental group
significantly increased except in the fields of evaluation (p=0/201) and inductive reasoning (p=0/209).
Conclusion: Applying active learning strategies such as concept mapping method can improve
learning and critical thinking skills as a basic principle in the students