Culturally relevant pedagogy of critical thinking for leadership education: Action research of Korean nurses in the United States

Nursing education in the United States faces continual challenges in the work of equipping students with the technical and critical thinking skills that will foster the leadership development necessary for them to effectively function in the modern nursing role. A major challenge facing nursing educators today is adequately meeting the educational needs of the growing number of international students. From both a linguistic standpoint and a cultural perspective, international nursing students face issues related to interdisciplinary communication as well as leadership expectations implicit to the United States (U.S.) nursing role, which demand autonomy and excellent critical thinking skills. One purpose of this study was to develop a culturally relevant instructional strategy that would cultivate transformative leadership through improved critical thinking skills for Korean nurses enrolled in a Bachelor of Science degree program for registered nurses (RN-to-BSN). Another purpose was to use an action research approach to enhance transformational leadership capital for both instructor and students through a leadership education dynamic. For this action research study, qualitative data were collected, analyzed, and interpreted in three distinct cycles. Participants were selected from the Korean RN-to-BSN Track at Global University (GU) and included 5 faculty members, 3 former students, and 14 currently enrolled students. Data indicated the need to bridge the Korean-to-U.S. culture gap. This occurred by means of culturally relevant pedagogical considerations and instructional strategy development that fostered leader development through the exercise of autonomous critical thinking processes. The culturally relevant strategies included anonymous student-generated avatars and clinical scenarios produced through the PixtonRTM (Goodinson & Goodinson, 2013) comic creation program and supporting activities such as reflective journals and peer review throughout the NURS406 Critical Thinking course. Results revealed students' heightened awareness of the congruence of critical thinking to leadership capital and its relationship to the U.S. nursing role. They strongly suggested that these strategies enabled the students to transcend cultural boundaries toward nursing leadership through free expression and praxis of independent critical thinking. The study also resulted in the researcher's enhanced level of transformative leadership capital through the action research processes and the leadership education dynamic.