“Covering Content” and Teaching Thinking: Deconstructing the Additive Curriculum

For more than 25 years, reliance on conventional pedagogy has led nurse educators to persistently focus on what students need to learn to enter contemporary practice settings. Therefore, as biomedical and nursing knowledge grows and the health care system in which students will practice becomes increasingly complex, content is persistently added to nursing curricula, while little is taken out. An underlying assumption of this approach is that if important content is “covered,” thinking necessarily follows. This study, using Heideggerian hermeneutics, examines the relationship between covering content and thinking by explicating the common experiences of teachers enacting interpretive pedagogies. One of the themes that emerged from this analysis is presented: “Covering Content” and Teaching Thinking: Deconstructing the Additive Curriculum.