A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NURSING STUDENTS' AND NURSING FACULTIES' PERCEPTIONS OF SATISFACTION WITH THEIR NURSING CURRICULAR APPROACH AT THE ASSOCIATE DEGREE LEVEL UTILIZING THE: THE INTEGRATED CONTENT APPROACH, THE TRADITIONAL BLOCK CONTENT APPROACH AND T

This descriptive study investigated the "state of the art" of nursing curricula at the associate degree level as related to (1) graduating senior nursing students' and nursing instructors' satisfaction with their specific curricular approach and (2) the state board examination results. The curricular approaches were identified as (1) Traditional, (2) Integrated, and (3) Combination. The study was conducted in the following manner: the purpose, significance, and five research hypothesis were established; literature related to general education curriculum and nursing education curriculum was reviewed; two essentially similar questionnaires were developed and distributed to 1,432 students and 305 instructors of 23 associated degree nursing programs; the data from the returned questionnaires were computer programmed and analyzed. Nineteen nursing programs returned 622 student questionnaires and 117 instructor questionnaires.;The basis for the five research hypotheses was: the integrated curricular approach would provide more satisfaction in learning for the students and in teaching for the instructors and higher state board returns than the traditional and combination curricular approaches would. Five research hypotheses were tested using descriptive and inferential statistics to indicate frequency distribution, means, relationships and differences at the .05 level of significance. Operationally, the five research hypotheses were restated in the null hypotheses form for statistical analysis to determine satisfaction with the majority of the items in the questionnaires of the students and instructors and to determine differences in the state board results, among the three curricular approaches.;The five null hypotheses were accepted and the five research hypotheses were not supported by the data. Thirteen nursing competencies out of 44 were identified by the students of the three curricula groups as indicating a significant level of disagreement in their perceptions of satisfaction with their functions. Five out of 44 nursing competencies were identified by the instructors as areas of disagreement in their perceptions of satisfaction. None of these nursing competencies was mutually identified by both students and instructors. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.