Combining Think-Alouds with Metaphor Analysis: An Expert-Reader Study in Nursing

Given the demands for complex and intense reading loads and the expectations for comprehension of text material for application purposes, identifying exactly how one learns to read like a nursing professional is of critical importance as a core aspect of the postsecondary nursing education curriculum. Despite the critical importance of literacy in nursing education, current literature does not adequately explore how expert readers in the field navigate and comprehend complex texts. This gap in research leaves nursing students without the necessary support to develop the literacy skills required for their academic and professional success.  

The purpose of this study was to investigate the literacy practices, habits, and conceptualizations of expert readers in the field of professional nursing by addressing the following questions:

• What cognitive strategies do expert readers in nursing employ during technical text reading? 
• How do expert readers conceptualize their engagement with disciplinary texts in nursing? 

We adopted Alexander’s (2005) perspective that reading development is a lifelong endeavor and that ongoing instruction is necessary, even at the postsecondary level where literacies—and the contextualized nature of literacies—are largely tacit. Further, we drew inspiration from the expert-novice paradigm and prior expert-readers studies, which have contrasted cognitive processing between experienced readers and novices, identifying strategies that contribute to expertise. Thus, we built this study on a need to better understand how expert readers navigate field-specific texts in attempts to back map literacy-development from novice to professional/expert.

The combination of a think-aloud protocol and a Retrospective Metaphor Interview across a three-interview series with expert readers who specialize in nursing yielded a rich data set. Participation was delimited to higher education faculty with professional nursing expertise, and findings include specific cognitive strategies used while engaging with disciplinary texts, conceptualizations of discipline-specific reading, and habits and attitudes related to reading for professional purposes.