The influence of language of instruction in the facilitation of academic activities: Nurse educators’ experiences

Health SA Gesondheid

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The influence of language of instruction in the facilitation of academic activities: Nurse educators’ experiences
 
Creator Ndawo, Gugu
 
Subject nursing education language of instruction (LOI); nurse educator; proficiency; academic activities; experiences; LOI incompetenceiency; academic activities
Description Background: Learners in most South African higher education institutions are taught mainly through English for most of their academic lives, yet many of them enter these institutions with poor proficiency in this language of instruction (LOI).Aims: The purpose of this article was to describe the experiences of nurse educators teaching in a 4-year comprehensive nursing diploma programme regarding the use of English as the LOI during academic activities.Setting: The nursing college under study offers a 4-year comprehensive nursing diploma programme as well as post-basic diploma qualifications such as Primary Health and Midwifery Nursing Science and is situated in Gauteng, South Africa.Methods: Twenty nurse educators were purposively sampled for in-depth individual interviews until data saturation and were requested to participate in the study. Tesch’s protocol of qualitative data analysis was used and the themes that emerged were confirmed by an independent coder. Trustworthiness was ensured, and ethical considerations were adhered to.Results: It emerged that English language incompetence (1) undermines learners’ self-esteem; (2) hinders critical, reflective and creative thinking; (3) renders understanding difficult and that (4) nurse educators’ incompetence in LOI hinders meaningful teaching.Conclusions: Recommendations were made to improve the use of the LOI because through language interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding are integrated, thus ultimately providing patients with comprehensive, holistic and transcultural healthcare.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor
Date 2019-08-27
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hsag.v24i0.1261
 
Source Health SA Gesondheid; Vol 24 (2019); 10 pages 2071-9736 1025-9848
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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Coverage Gauteng — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2019 Gugu Ndawo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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