Congruence Among Mathematics Skills Used On The Job By Practical Nurses vs. The Prerequisite Skills Required For Admission Into The Practical Nursing Program

The standard for evaluating a student\u27s mathematic ability (grade level) for admission to many vocational-technical programs is through the administration of the Tests of Adult Basic Education (TABE). There has come forth a concern from vocational educators, that students entering programs may not be prepared for the mathematics required by the curriculum, even though the student has met the criteria for entry as established by the state curriculum frameworks as evidenced by their scores on a TABE which had recently been administered. Furthermore, questions raised among instructional, administrative and guidance personnel about the congruence of math skills required on the TABE vs. those used by practical nurses on the job supported the need for a study to determine the congruence of these sets of mathematics skills. Using the OMRA inventory developed by David Pucel, the mathematic operations required for job related math applications are indicated by samples collected from active nursing practitioners. Three analysis teams consisting of practical nurses and math experts were established and determined the math operations required for solving the job related math samples collected. The math skills tested by the TABE were then compared to the job related math samples. With the math operations of the variables ranked, the Spearman Rank Correlation was used to evaluate the correlation across the TABE and the mathematic job requirements of practical nursing. Based on 19 math operations identified from the Practical Nursing job math requirements, the results showed that there was little correlation among these two variables (r=. 4974)