Cognitive/concept mapping: A teaching strategy for nursing

Cognitive/concept mapping is an educational strategy that takes into consideration the principles of educational psychology. The most important single factor that influences learning is what the learner already knows. Nursing students face a great need to understand the larger questions and problems of their chosen field. Unless there is understanding, students may only commit unassimilated data to short-term memory and no meaningful learning will occur. The purpose of the following paper is to present concept mapping as a learning/teaching strategy for nursing students and nursing faculty. Examples of maps will be presented along with suggestions about how they can be used to plan care for a particular client or to learn more about the nursing care of a specific disease process.