ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the concerned with transformational critical pedagogy, which places students at the centre of learning. The Francis Report, published in February 2013, examined the causes of failings in care reported between 2005 and 2009 at Mid-Staffordshire National Health Service Foundation Trust. The primacy of the concept of risk in nurse education has its origins in neo-liberal governance, where there has been a disintegration of traditional certainties, for example, professional authority. Conventional pedagogy is concerned with transmission of skills, facts and knowledge deemed a prerequisite for nursing. Critical pedagogy is a transformation-based approach to education, which rejects abstracted forms of commodified learning packaged as didactic instructional teaching. In volunteering situations, nursing students are equal partners in the learner/teacher encounter, with learning and teaching crossing professional, disciplinary and social divides. Student volunteering is not without its challenges. Nursing students, much like other students on full-time courses, often work to supplement income, and have additional caring and/or family responsibilities.