Addressing Obstacles to Success: Improving student completion, retention and achievement in science modules in applied health programmes, with particular reference to Maori

Abstract or Summary

The overall aim of our research project is to remove “the problem” of achievement in science for students in the nursing and midwifery programmes. Past students have reported science as difficult and time-consuming, and their achievement results reflected this. Science was seen as a barrier to overall course success (Gibson et al, 2005). Other research (Zepke, et al, 2006; Otrel-Cass et al, 2006) has focused on problems of retention and completion in the tertiary sector, thus locating the student or the tertiary context as the problem. Our research rests on a different proposition, arguing that the curriculum is at the root of “the problem”. We are adjusting the science curriculum in an attempt to make the links between science and practice more explicit, so that students might see greater relevance for their learning, make richer links to prior experience and more explicitly link the science to their chosen careers.