Abstract

The Fitness for Practice Report (UKCC 1999) acknowledged the importance of competent nursing practice and shared the responsibility for achieving this by making United Kingdom National Health Service employees jointly responsible for this with higher education teachers. This article presents a wide review of educational literature, to discover how both the constructivist and the sociocultural approach to learning will promote nursing expertise. Consideration of both these approaches to learning is germane to pre and post registration nursing courses, given that learning is both culturally situated and individually constructed from a variety of different sources, and the review demonstrates the pivotal position of the mentor and other practice teachers.