The effectiveness of concept mapping on development of critical thinking in nursing education: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES: As an essential skill in daily clinical nursing practice, critical thinking ability has been an important objective in nursing education. Concept mapping enables nursing students connect new information to existing knowledge and integrates interdisciplinary knowledge. However, there is a lack of evidence related to critical thinking ability and concept mapping in nursing education. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to assess the effect of concept mapping in developing critical thinking in nursing education.

DESIGN: This systematic review was reported in line with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA).

DATA SOURCES: A search was conducted in PubMed, Web of science, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Randomized controlled trials (RCT) comparing concept mapping and traditional teaching method were retrieved.

REVIEW METHODS: Data were collected by two reviewers according to the data extraction tables. The methodological quality of included studies was assessed by other two reviewers. The results of meta-analysis were presented using mean difference (MD).

RESULT: Thirteen trials were summarized in the systematic review and eleven trials were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled effect size showed that, comparing with traditional methods, concept mapping could improve subjects' critical thinking ability measured by California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI), California Critical Thinking Skill Test (CCTST) and Critical Thinking Scale (CTS). The subgroup analyses showed that concept mapping improved the score of all subscales.

CONCLUSION: The result of this review indicated that concept mapping could affect the critical thinking affective dispositions and critical thinking cognitive skills. Further high quality research using uniform evaluation is required.