The Student's North Star
Earlier this year, I wrote that the student should be our North Star.
As educators, our role is not simply to deliver content or evaluate performance. Our responsibility is to keep the student at the center of our decisions, always pointing them toward safe, compassionate, and competent nursing practice.
Not long after writing that article, I found myself in a conversation with Aaron E. de Santiago Jones, M.A., Director of the Educational Opportunity Program at UC Santa Barbara, a colleague outside of nursing. We were talking about motivation, growth, and what helps people persist through difficulty. He mentioned that people move toward what they can see themselves becoming. The clearer the picture, the stronger the pull. I am grateful for that insight, which he likely did not know would find its way into a nursing education framework.
That idea connected directly to metacognition and to the framework I am building. I began researching, asking how this works, what the evidence says, and how it might be applied to my framework. The north star analogy was already part of my framework as a way of keeping faculty oriented toward the student. As I read more deeply, I came to understand that possible selves theory also explained something I had not yet fully articulated: why the north star analogy matters not just as a way of orienting faculty, but as a way of orienting students toward the professional they are becoming.
It has been said that the student's north star is the patient. Through this research I came to understand something deeper: before students can fully orient toward the patient, they first need to be able to see themselves. Not only who they hope to become, but who they are right now, and the distance between the two. It is the relationship between those two selves that gives reflection direction and helps shape professional identity over time.
And this is not a process that happens in a single clinical day or a single semester. It evolves gradually, shaped by the professional culture nursing faculty intentionally create, the way faculty model what professional identity looks like in practice, and the accumulation of experiences that either confirm, challenge, or deepen a student's sense of who they are becoming.
As nurse educators, we spend considerable time thinking about what our students should know and what they should be able to do. We design lectures, simulations, and clinical experiences to develop competent practitioners. Many of us go further, asking not just what to teach but how to teach it in a way that transfers, that builds the bridge between knowing and doing, that prepares students for the complexity of what they will face at the bedside.
Perhaps there is a question worth asking alongside all of that.
Who are our students becoming?
Not after they graduate. Not after they pass the NCLEX. Today.
Each patient interaction. Each clinical experience. Each mistake. Each moment of reflection.
All of it contributes, over time, to the professional identity students are gradually developing.
This is the question that led me to develop a concept I call Dreaming in Action.
Dreaming in Action is the intentional practice of helping students develop a clear vision of the nurse they hope to become and using that vision to guide their learning, reflection, and professional growth over time.
Dreaming in Action does not replace reflective practice. It gives reflection a destination.
Rather than asking only,
"What were you noticing about yourself and the situation?"
Dreaming in Action invites a second, forward-facing question alongside that reflection:
"How did your choices today move you closer to the nurse you envision becoming?"
I believe that question changes the nature of reflection for students.
Reflection is no longer only about understanding what happened. It becomes part of a longer process, across many experiences and many encounters, of understanding who we are gradually becoming because of the choices we make and the habits we build.
Educational psychology offers one explanation for why this matters. Possible Selves Theory suggests that people are more likely to persist toward meaningful goals when they can envision a future version of themselves and connect their present choices to that future (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Oyserman et al., 2004; Oyserman et al., 2006).
That future self becomes a kind of North Star. But the nurse they are becoming is always in service of something beyond themselves. Ultimately, the patient is the student's North Star, just as the student is ours. Dreaming in Action is the practice of keeping that chain of orientation visible and intentional throughout the entire arc of the program.
A North Star doesn't tell us exactly how to reach our destination. It simply provides direction.
When students have a clear picture of the nurse they hope to become, reflection becomes more than looking backward. It becomes an opportunity to ask whether today's choices are moving them toward, or away from, that future professional identity.
Our responsibility as educators is not only teaching nursing. Perhaps it is helping students intentionally become the nurse their patients will one day need them to be.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
How do you help students develop not only clinical competence, but also a professional identity they can intentionally grow toward?
References
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969.
Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., Terry, K., & Hart-Johnson, T. (2004). Possible selves as roadmaps. Journal of Research in Personality, 38(2), 130–149.
Oyserman, D., Bybee, D., & Terry, K. (2006). Possible selves and academic outcomes: How and when possible selves impel action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(1), 188–204.
© Melinda R. Murray, MSN-Ed, RN | ProfessionalCultureFramework.com