Learning About Aboriginal Contexts: The Reading Circle Approach

Abstract

As more opportunities arise for nursing students to obtain experience in community sites, they will be called on to practice in culturally appropriate ways more often. Although nurses remain challenged by the range of populations needing differentiated approaches, Aboriginal cultural contexts deserve special attention. Nurse educators must help students increase their understanding of Aboriginal life and ways of knowing. One way to facilitate this understanding is through a learning approach called reading circles. Reading circles offer a structure in the classroom for students to interact about ideas or readings. The reading circle process is congruent with Aboriginal ways of learning, which emphasize working in circle, with each member having a role and an equal chance to be heard. Aboriginal students in the class may be particularly comfortable with this learning method. This article describes specific steps for incorporating the reading circle approach into the nurse education classroom.

Supporting Australian Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal nursing students using mentoring circles: an action research study

“…There is little documentation, for example, about group mentoring models being used with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australia to improve retention, as has been the case in places like Alaska and New Zealand (Wilson, 1997;Zapalska et al, 2002). Working in a circle, however, is a learning method historically used in Indigenous Australian cultures which continues to be relevant today (Begoray & Bannister, 2008).…”

Leisure reading collections in academic health sciences and science libraries: results of visits to seven libraries

“…Little has been written on the role of academic health sciences libraries in providing leisure reading to their patrons, despite the literature's acknowledged role in the health humanities. Benefits attributed to including the literature in health practitioner education include increasing empathy; developing cultural competence; and improving the critical thinking, observation and communication skills, of the students . Only two articles have been devoted to describing individual leisure reading collections in health sciences libraries .…”

“…Benefits attributed to including the literature in health practitioner education include increasing empathy; developing cultural competence; and improving the critical thinking, observation and communication skills, of the students. [19][20][21] Only two articles have been devoted to describing individual leisure reading collections in health sciences libraries. 22,23 The third article, which presents the results of a survey on medical students' leisure reading, alludes to, but does not describe, the collection set up as a result of the survey.…”

Discerning Success of Indigenous Health Students in Community-based Programs

“…ANAC (2009a) claimed that people "identify with care providers who look and speak like themselves" (p. 13), however, this is not well documented in the literature and requires more research. Begoray and Banister (2008) insisted that nursing care in Indigenous communities will be provided primarily by non-Indigenous nurses because there are not enough Indigenous nurses to serve all the remote communities. As…”

“…Meaning-making, or connections that students made between study and real life, occurred when the curriculum was culturally relevant, and students were comfortable in the learning environment (ANAC, 2009a;Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005;Begoray & Banister, 2008;Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991). In ANAC's review of the literature on cultural competence and cultural safety in First Nations, Inuit and Métis nursing education, they recommended that programming and curriculum content should be relevant to Indigenous students' view of the world, and that "relevance can be fostered by: including the presence and use of Aboriginal epistemology and ontology" (p. 19).…”