La experiencia europea en el cambio de paradigma de aprendizaje

The setting of this study is one Boromarajonani College of Nursing located in the southern region of Thailand where there has been political unrest for nearly a decade. The College has two main buildings on a small area—around one acre—of one municipality. In the academic year 2007, 386 students enrolled in two available programmes. This intake included 182 students of the Project (for Southern border problem solution) and 60-80 students of the normal programme for each class. At that time, the college had 35 instructors with a ratio of Doctor of Philosophy, master and bachelor degrees of0.29:8.0:1.71. The teaching and learning management of the college focused on being student-centred (Boromarajonani College of Nursing, 2008b). In 2010,

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it had one library with a computer Internet network that could be accessed by a Union Library Management (ULIBM) retrieval system. The Internet connection and signal distribution were available for the students and instructors over a full 24 hours period. At this time, the college also provided the students with one computer laboratory that had 62 computers and one nursing laboratory. On a five-point scale, the students rated their overall satisfaction on the quality of teaching and learning management and learning supports in this academic year at 3.51. Moreover, the college had one dining hall, both indoor and outdoor stadiums, and a strict security system, i.e. every unit of the buildings had a CCTV system. At the front-gate, the college had a bomb check using mirrors under cars. The students thought that the physical environment of the college facilitated their learning; they rated their satisfaction at 3.60 (on a five-point scale) (Praboromarajchanok Institute, 2010c).

Furthermore, the college provided the students with three dormitories—two for female students and another one for the males. This means junior and senior students had to live in the same dorms, but in different units. While living on campus, the students had to follow many accommodation rules. During the week, they could not stay out over night; however, this was permitted on the weekend. They had to return to the dorms by 6pm of the day before their next class. During practical placement, they could go out or stay out overnight if they were off duty, but they had to return to the college for no less than three hours before their next evening shifts, and by 4pm of the day they worked on night shifts. Beyond these arrangements, the students had to ask for formal permission from the Director of the College. Every day at 8pm, all of the students who were staying in the dorms had to join the evening meeting to receive college information, attend Buddhist and Muslim prayers and make a pledge to their patients and profession. This activity took around 30-40 minutes. In addition, when living on campus, the students had to clean their units by themselves, including always maintaining the residential and college environment in good condition (Boromarajonani College of Nursing, 2007, 2010b). It should be remembered that all these students were not only living and studying in an area of unrest and were affected by the situation, but they also faced several difficulties due to the Project‘s implementation to address the serious nursing shortage of the area. The next section summarises the Project details and the problems resulting from it.

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THE PROFESSIONAL NURSE GRADUATE INCREMENT PROJECT FOR SOUTHERN BORDER PROBLEM SOLUTION

The Professional Nurse Graduate Increment Project for Southern Border Problem Solution, as specified by The Secretariat of the Cabinet (SOC) (2007), was proposed by Ministry of the Interior. After being approved by the Cabinet on April 24, 2007, the Project was implemented during 2007-2011 under the shared responsibility of the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of the Interior. Because the main objectives of the Project were to address the serious nursing shortage of the area and strengthen the stabilisation of the country, 3,000 students from the five southern border provinces were recruited in one intake in 2007. The Thai government hoped that graduates from this programme who came from the local area would hold good attitudes towards serving the regional people based on their good understanding of their life-styles, culture, and languages, leading to an enhancement of public health services for the region. Scholarships for Project students (which provided financial support for their study and eligibility to be government officers when graduating students successfully passed the licence tests and took up work in their hometowns) motivated students to apply for the programme. The government expected that this policy could motivate the graduating nurses to continue to work in the local area instead of moving out due to the unrest. Moreover, it was thought that the Project could encourage higher education and quality of life for the youth of the southern border provinces, which would contribute to the sustainable development of the area (Secretariat of the Cabinet, 2007).

However, this large scale recruitment of nursing students from the southern region led to many problems. A study that evaluated the implementation of the Project during the beginning period found lower admission standards into the nursing education college programme (Intongpan et al., 2008). Sixty-seven percent of the candidates had low GPAs, i.e. 2.00-2.90, and only 1.77% of them had achieved an examination score of 50% or more. Only 49% of the students had recently completed their high school programmes, whereas many of the other students transferred from other programmes of study. Twenty-four percent were studying for a bachelor degree, 23% had completed a bachelor degree, 3%, had completed a diploma, and one was studying for a master degree. Most of the Project students had completed their high school education in a Muslim seminary school and nearly half of them were skilful in Yawi language (a dialect of the Muslim language spoken in southern Thailand) but had a poor basic

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education, especially of English. This resulted in learning problems when entering their nursing course, i.e. when they had to learn technical terms. They perceived that they were weak students, would communicate only within their groups, and did not dare to speak Thai because they were concerned they might say something wrong. As a result, they sometimes could not understand what their instructors explained in Thai, but they were not confident to ask for more explanation (Intongpan et al., 2008).

Furthermore, according to Intongpan et al. (2008), although the Project had enough financial support, the students and instructors encountered many difficulties, especially during the beginning period. They had to attend lectures in an overcrowded classroom with distracting noise and some students were seated too far from the media being used by instructors. They also had insufficient learning supports such as textbooks, computers, and audio-visual equipment, due to inadequate lead-in time for their purchase. In the dormitories, they had to live in cramped rooms in hot weather and with poor ventilation and not enough storage cabinets and desks, so they could not concentrate on their studies. In addition, the large number of Project students, especially when combined with the students in normal programme, led to difficulties in teaching management. In some colleges that had 200-370 students per class, the students were divided into two to four groups, which meant the instructors had to teach the same topics up to four times. When the students could not understand their lessons and/or could not pass examinations, instructors had to help them by repeating teaching sessions again and again in extra time. Finally, 2,848 students graduated and started work in the five border provinces on April 1, 2012; 116 students were still studying. (Some of these Project students had to change their studies to a public health course; 104 students were expected to graduate in 2012, and 12 in 2013 (Lucksanavisit, 2011)). At the time of data collection for this study, these Project students were in the fourth year of their BNS programme.

As previously mentioned, the students in the Project could be eligible to become government officers if they successfully passed the licence tests and took up work in their home towns. This reason should motivate them to continue to work, as being a government officer can bring several compensations, as explained in the following section.

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