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Attracting and retaining student nurses who will persist in their academic studies is essential to the success of the Canadian health care system. While a small body of knowledge existed in the area of retention and attrition of undergraduate nursing students, little was known about the students’ perspectives on persistence. Through a qualitative analysis of the stories of persistence for six undergraduate nursing students from the University of Victoria, this study revealed and explored the variety of factors that influence undergraduate student nursing persistence. Important information for improving Canadian nursing education was revealed in the process. Mainstream qualitative research techniques in this study were expanded with the use of photovoice. Photographs taken by the study participants were used to elicit their narratives of persistence, increasing the accessibility of the stories’ emotional content. Internarratives were also derived from aspects of the participants’ original stories and provided an additional approach for understanding student nursing persistence. The results of the study revealed six main themes that represented major factors of influence on student nursing persistence: (a) support, (b) challenges to persistence, (c) motivation to continue persisting, (d) the nursing profession, (e) teaching, and (f) the curriculum. The study demonstrated the critical importance of understanding undergraduate nursing persistence from the students’ perspectives, as well as the value of incorporating photovoice as a methodological strategy. The implications for nursing recruitment, education, and future research were also discussed and continued research on and further dialogue about these issues were deemed important for nursing education. / Graduate / 0745 / briarschulz@shaw.ca

Chapter One, introduction and research methodology. Chapter Two presents a review of the research domain and the parent literature related to the research problem. The foundation theories, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship education literature is reviewed with the research boundaries stated. The theoretical and practical foundations are laid and the research hypotheses are introduced. Chapter Three describes the pretest-posttest experimental research methodology employed to test the hypotheses. Chapter Four discusses the results and Chapter Five concludes the thesis with the data analysis, the research’s limitations, and a summary of the research’s contributions to practice and knowledge including suggestions for future research.

Chapter One, introduction and research methodology. Chapter Two presents a review of the research domain and the parent literature related to the research problem. The foundation theories, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship education literature is reviewed with the research boundaries stated. The theoretical and practical foundations are laid and the research hypotheses are introduced. Chapter Three describes the pretest-posttest experimental research methodology employed to test the hypotheses. Chapter Four discusses the results and Chapter Five concludes the thesis with the data analysis, the research’s limitations, and a summary of the research’s contributions to practice and knowledge including suggestions for future research.

Chapter One, introduction and research methodology. Chapter Two presents a review of the research domain and the parent literature related to the research problem. The foundation theories, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship education literature is reviewed with the research boundaries stated. The theoretical and practical foundations are laid and the research hypotheses are introduced. Chapter Three describes the pretest-posttest experimental research methodology employed to test the hypotheses. Chapter Four discusses the results and Chapter Five concludes the thesis with the data analysis, the research’s limitations, and a summary of the research’s contributions to practice and knowledge including suggestions for future research.

Background: Clinical reasoning is the ability to reason as a clinical situation changes and is an essential component of competence in nursing practice. However, some traditional teaching and learning strategies do not always facilitate the development of the desired clinical reasoning skills in nursing students. Problem statement: Nurse educators at a military nursing college in Gauteng are predominantly utilising traditional teacher-centred teaching and learning strategies. The concern is that if students are predominantly taught by means of traditional teacher-centred strategies this may not contribute to the development of the desired clinical reasoning skills required for nursing practice. To improve educational practices to promote the development of student nurses' clinical reasoning skills, the researcher conducted an action research study. Aim: The aim of the study was to facilitate a process of change towards improving educational practices in order to promote the development of undergraduate student nurses' clinical reasoning skills. Methodology: Action research was used to conduct the research study by means of three phases. During Phase 1: the Baseline phase, data was collected by means of unstructured interviews with nurse educators and head of departments to explore and describe the challenges experienced by nurse educators in utilising alternative educational practices. During Phase 2: the Action Research Process phase, an action research group was established to co-construct an action plan to address the identified challenges. Four action research cycles each comprising four steps, namely plan, act, observe and reflect was implemented. Phase 3, the Evaluation of the Action Research Process phase, evaluated the outcomes of the action research process by means of the World Café data collection method. Qualitative data from Phase 2 was analysed using the steps outlined in Saldaña (2013). The activities conducted during the action research group workshops were recorded and minutes were kept. Data from the World Café was analysed using the creative hermeneutic data analysis method as suggested by Boomer and McCormack (2010). Findings: The challenges encountered by nurse educators were explored and the following four main themes emerged: educational practices; clinical learning environment; military learning environment; and role players in the teaching and learning environment. The challenges were prioritised by the action research group into four strategies: teaching, learning and assessment strategies; the clinical learning environment; continuous professional development; and support and selection of students and nurse educators. An action plan was co-constructed during Phase 2 by the action research group participants. The project was evaluated by the action research group as successful. The action research process contributed to the professional development of the nurse educators and resulted in the utilisation of more student-centred teaching, learning and assessment strategies. Conclusions: An action plan was developed to improve educational practices at the South African Military Health Service Nursing College. The researcher also developed a conceptual framework to promote clinical reasoning skills. Addressing nurse educator challenges in collaboration and empowering them with the means, opportunity and skill to utilise studentcentred teaching and learning strategies may contribute to the development of undergraduate student nurses' clinical reasoning skills. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Nursing Science / PhD / Unrestricted

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between both social support and unsupportive interactions and psychological outcomes, in a sample of college students who recently had experienced a stressful event. The research design was cross-sectional, and data were collected from 142 college students. As hypothesized, a significant positive association was found between unsupportive interactions received by participants and depressive symptoms. Contrary to hypotheses, no significant associations were found between unsupportive interactions and positive emotion or posttraumatic growth. Additionally, no significant relationship was evident between received emotional support and the outcome variables. Exploratory analysis revealed that positive reappraisal mediated the relationship between total received support and posttraumatic growth. A major contribution of the present study is evidence for unsupportive interactions significantly predicting depressive symptoms in a college-aged sample. Additionally, the current study adds to the literature concerning the correlates of posttraumatic growth.

The vast underrepresentation of minority, first-generation, and low-income students in postgraduate programs is cause for serious concern in the growing workforce. Despite the increase of college enrollment among underrepresented first-generation, low-income (UFGLI) students over the last decade, there are still a disproportionately small percentage of UFGLI students in postgraduate education, such as doctoral, professional, and masters-level programs. These educational disparities significantly affect opportunity for societal advancement and power. Findings from previous literature reveal that UFGLI college students often lack access to resources that provide assistance in the pursuit of postgraduate studies and that UFGLI students encounter additional barriers during the postgraduate application process compared to their more privileged peers. This study includes an in-depth discussion on the barriers that students encounter throughout the application process and introduces a new construct to the literature that may impact students’ entrance into postgraduate programs: postgraduate school application self-efficacy. While previous scholars have explored the admissions processes for a variety of disciplines and have developed a measure for graduate education self-efficacy, no measure has been developed to assess postgraduate school application self-efficacy (PSASE). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable measure of students’ postgraduate school application self-efficacy. In order to accomplish this, parallel analyses and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to determine the underlying structure of the PSASE scale, Cronbach’s alpha was computed to examine the scale’s internal consistency, and correlational analyses were conducted to demonstrate convergent and divergent validity. Results revealed a conceptually interpretable, five-factor solution that accounted for 75.43% of the total variance. The 25-item measure contained items with high factor loadings, low cross-loading, and strong construct coverage. The subscales all demonstrated strong internal consistency and cohesiveness. Correlational analyses with two similar, but distinct, constructs (graduate education academic self-efficacy and self-esteem) provided evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the PSASE subscales and total scale. Implications and future directions were also explored.

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