Use debriefing to enable multiple viewpoints, shared cognitive resources, and challenge students' assumptions to foster critical thinking¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

As a practitioner implication, the article recommends designing debriefing conversations so that multiple perspectives and jointly constructed accounts become resources for reflexive scrutiny of performance. As the authors state, "We highlight the importance of enabling multiple viewpoints and shared cognitive resources for epistemic outcomes, while also challenging students' assumptions and foster critical thinking skills". This is implemented through facilitator prompts that activate observers, invite self-correction, and elicit what students would do differently.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A facilitator who can orchestrate turn-taking, activate observers, and press for both positive and critical evaluations of performance

Constraints¶

Target Learners¶

• nursing students in post-simulation debriefing

Target Learning Goals¶

• critical thinking
• reflexive evaluation of clinical performance

Claims¶

• Debriefing description phase enacts conversational remembering that turns private recollections into a public, shared epistemic artifact [+W]
• Facilitator techniques such as advocacy-inquiry, guided self-correction, and the plus-delta method function as metacognitive practices that shift focus from retrodiction to prediction [+W]
• Debriefing analysis and application phases operate as distributed metacognition on the publicly shared account [+W]
• The facilitator builds the shared account by shifting between narrator, mentor, and monitor roles and consolidating group consensus [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Explicit Discussion of Perspectives
• Explicitly Discuss Different Perspectives
• Diversity of Perspectives and Identities
• Prevent closely knit homogeneous-attitude communities to reduce bias by increasing productive friction
• Probing Questions
• Perspective Taking Prompts
• Treat debriefing models as designable curricular artefacts that coordinate remembering, analysis, and planning

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Mads Solberg, Charlott Sellberg. (2025). Debriefing as epistemic engineering: conversational remembering and socially distributed metacognition in healthcare simulation. Instructional Science (2026) 54:7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09760-5