| Sumario: | This hermeneutic inquiry asked the question: What are the student responses as indicated by ethnographic analysis of journal entries of associate degree nursing students participating in reflective critical thinking strategies in a 40 hour Critical Thinking in Nursing Course?This research examined journal reflections of associate degree nursing learners as they participated in an elective, interactive class, Critical Thinking in Nursing. Anonymous journal entries were recorded and analyzed using ethnographic software. Six patterns were identified within the journal entries and operationally defined; these patterns were thinking, assessing, feeling, paradigm, documenting and intuition. The most frequent theme in the student journal entries related to thinking, operationally defined as 'all references to reasoning or self-expression.' The identified patterns were related to Newman's (1988) paradigm of pattern recognition leading to expanding consciousness.The definition of critical thinking used was suspension of judgment pending further inquiry. This discovery research depicted the life world in the language of the associate degree nursing student. The foundation for this study stemmed from a survey of critical thinking content in associate degree nursing programs in Ohio which indicated an interest in including critical thinking in nursing curricula, but no respondent taught critical thinking as a separate course and a literature review revealed an absence of the language of the student in doctoral studies addressing student responses to reflective critical thinking strategies utilized in the associate degree nursing classroom. The framework for this study was based on Schon's (1990) book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, where Schon (1990) advocated reflective education as a strategy for students within a discipline to solve 'indeterminate zones of practice' (p.6) and as a way of discovering tacit knowledge.
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