This document discusses the need for and benefits of concept-based nursing curricula over traditional topic-based curricula. It argues that concept-based curricula focus on foundational principles and concepts that can be applied across settings rather than just facts and skills. This requires learner-centered teaching approaches where students construct meaning to develop deep conceptual understanding. Benefits include promoting critical thinking skills, cultural understanding, motivation for learning, and language fluency to better prepare nursing students for practice. The key challenges are developing the curriculum around concepts and training faculty in conceptual teaching methods.

1. CONCEPT BASED CURRICULUM
(NEED OF FUTURE)
YASHWANT RAMAWAT
RAK COLLEGE OF NURSING

2. INTRODUCTION :
 The concept-based nursing curriculum focuses
on the foundational principles, or concepts, that
can be applied across patient settings, the life
span, and the health-illness continuum.
Concept-based curriculum is contrasted with
the traditional topic-based curriculum which
focuses on factual content and skills with
assumed rather than deliberate attention to the
development of conceptual understanding and
the transfer of knowledge.

3. CONCEPTUAL TEACHING A LEARNER-
CENTERED APPROACH
 Conceptual teaching requires
an active, learner-centered
approach.
 The nursing literature has long
called for a shift from teacher-
centered teaching to student-
centered learning.
 The connections students need to
make in a concept-based
curriculum must be supported by
teaching approaches that allow
students to construct deep meaning
and understanding; this is not the
typical outcome of a teacher-
centered approach

4. FOCUS OF CURRICULUM
 Tradition curriculum focus on facts and skills with
the goals of content coverage, analysis and the
memorization of information.
 Concept based curriculum focus on
concepts, principles and generalizations,
using related facts and skills as tools to
gain deeper understanding of disciplinary
content, trans-disciplinary themes and
interdisciplinary issues, and to facilitate
conceptual transfer through time, across
cultures and across situations.

5. GOAL OF CONCEPT BASED CURRICULUM :
 A corollary goal of concept-based curriculum that is
seldom stated overtly is development of the intellect.
 . In a concept-based curriculum teachers use the facts
in concert with concepts and generalizations to effect
higher order, synergistic thinking.
 Facts provide the foundation and support for deeper,
conceptual thinking and understanding.
 Concept based curriculum value student inquiry and
constructivist learning to support personal meaning-
making

6. CONCEPTUAL LEARNING PROCESS
 Process by which students learn
how to organize information in
logical mental structures
 Focuses on learning organizing
principles – cubby holes in which
mind organizes facts into ideas
 The difference between concept
and content focused learning is…
“the difference between facts of the
oil spill and an understanding of the
importance of environmental
sustainability”

7. CONTINUED …!!
 . Moving faculty from a content-focused, teacher-
centered learning environment to conceptual teaching
approaches may be the greatest challenge faced by
nursing programs wishing to adopt a concept-based
curriculum.
 A comprehensive faculty development plan that includes
consultants and faculty mentoring is necessary to
successfully implement such a curriculum.
 Directing faculty to literature addressing conceptual
learning and teaching strategies may also be helpful.
Because the nursing literature is somewhat limited in
this area, broadening a search to other disciplines,
particularly education, is suggested

8. BENEFITS TO A CONCEPT-BASED
CURRICULUM
 THINKING—It requires thinking students who draw on
critical, creative, reflective and conceptual thinking
abilities.
 INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING—It develops
intercultural understanding and international-
mindedness through conceptual transfer
 MOTIVATION FOR LEARNING—It recognizes that
intellectual and emotional engagement are essential
to the motivation for learning.
 FLUENCY WITH LANGUAGE—It increases fluency
with the languages of cultures and the disciplines.

9. CONCEPTS AND CONCEPTUAL LEARNING
EXPLAINED AS:
 Concepts, broadly defined, are the building blocks
used to organize the key competencies, skills, and
knowledge areas in nursing education.
 These may include patient profile concepts (such as
culture, development, or functional ability), health and
illness concepts (such as perfusion, inflammation, or
gas exchange), and/or professional concepts (such as
leadership, ethics, or care coordination).
 For example, in a concept-based curriculum, a course
may focus on the concept of infection control.

10. UNDERSTANDING OF CONCEPT-BASED,
THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODEL
 1.Curriculum development
Quality teaching is supported by quality curriculums.
The curriculum must be concept-based to meet the
goals of transfer of knowledge, deep conceptual
understanding, synergistic thinking, intercultural
understanding and person
 2.Teacher training
This challenge is critical to the success of a concept-
based model. If teachers do not understand the
concept-based model and required shifts in pedagogy
they will fall back on traditional teaching methods and
fail to effect transfer of knowledge and deep
understanding. al intellectual engagement

11. CONTINUED…!!
 3.Assessment The
challenge here is to assess
to the conceptual level of
understanding, rather than
just to the factual level. The
design of the classroom
assessments must be part
of the teacher training
programme.

12. CONCEPTUAL BASED CURRICULUM AND
NURSING PRACTICE
 Rescuing nursing education from
content saturation requires a major
paradigm shift: a shift away from
the practice orientation that
emphasizes content toward
conceptual pedagogy that
emphasizes concepts across
environmental settings, the life
span, and the health-illness
continuum.
 Concepts provide the
organizational framework and
structure for the curriculum and are
the foci within courses.

13. CONCLUSIONS :
 The nursing program supports international-mindedness
and understanding of other cultures. Identifying key and
related concepts and framing critical subject area
content with a central idea and additional “supporting
ideas” (which will be introduced later in this paper) can
strengthen the transfer of knowledge across global
contexts as new examples of previously learned
concepts arise. Concept-based curriculums can support
teachers in moving deliberately to idea-centred
instruction. I know that DP teachers value deeper
conceptual thinking and understanding. An idea-centred
curriculum of important conceptual understandings
supported by relevant content would help teachers meet
these goals.

14. THANK YOU !!