Nursing Students' Readiness for Self-Directed Learning and their Sustainable Developmental Behavior

Background: Education is a crucial mean for nursing students to grow themselves in modern societies. Therefore, they must possess the ability of self-directed learning which is a vital component for sustainability in nursing education. Aim: This study aimed to assess nursing students' readiness for self-directed learning and their sustainable developmental behavior. Subjects and Method: Design : Descriptive correlational research design used in the study. Setting: The study was conducted in Faculty of Nursing at Tanta University. Subject: Consisted of 945 nursing students of Faculty of Nursing at Tanta University. Tools: Two tools were used to collect the data. Tool I : Nursing Students' Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale. Tool II: Nursing Students' Sustainable Development Behavior Scale. Results : More than three-quarters (78.73%) of nursing students had a high level of self-directed learning readiness. Furthermore, more than two thirds (71.75%) of nursing students had a high level of sustainable development behavior. Conclusion: There were statistically positive correlations between overall nursing students' self-directed learning readiness and their perception regarding sustainable development behavior. Recommendations : The nursing faculty reinforces nursing students' self-directed learning readiness and keeps the progress of sustainable development behavior through attending workshops and training programs.


Introduction
In colleges and universities, education is a crucial means of accomplishing institutional goals such as improved effectiveness, efficiency, and student learning (Aithal & Aithal, 2020).Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences (Colomer, Serra, Cañabate, & Bubnys, 2020).According to Khalid.Bashir, and Amin (2020) self-directed learning (SDL) emphasizes the learning steps.These processes include identifying learning needs, articulating learning aims implicitly, and determining learning resources to select, plan, employ, and assess appropriate outcomes.SDL competence is especially advantageous for those planning to enter a career in which the working environment is rapidly changing, such as medicine, entrepreneurship, information technology, nursing etc (Morris & Rohs, 2023).Thus, nursing professionals need to be selfdirected learners in order to increase their independence, self-confidence in practice, motivation, self-discipline, and goal orientation due to the explosion of information and the continuously growing nursing knowledge (Wong & Kan, 2022).Self-directed learning readiness (SDLR) is the extent to which the nursing student possesses the ability, attitude, and personal qualities appropriate for SDL (Astuti, Wijaya, Abidin, & Fibriansari, 2023).There are nine dimensions necessary for self-directed learning readiness: positive orientation to the future; love of learning; ability to use basic study and problemsolving skills; informed acceptance of responsibility for one's own learning; initiative and independence in learning; creativity; openness to learning opportunities; self-concept as an effective learner; and self-management (Langegård, Kiani, Nielsen, & Svensson, 2021).Positive orientation to the future is the extent to which nursing students are collectively encouraging and rewarding future-oriented behaviors during the educational process.Love of learning refers to a student's enthusiasm or desire to learn only for its own sake (Poorchangizi, Borhani, Abbaszadeh, Mirzaee, & Farokhzadian, 2019).Ability to use basic study and problem-solving skills was regarded as a set of cognitive abilities to respond to demands or resolve issues as they evolved during the learning process (Ayish & Deveci, 2019).Informed acceptance of responsibility for one ' s own learning, which is crucial for lifelong learning and professional growth, particularly for nursing students, by overcoming many of the challenges that might come up during their learning process (Avelino, 2021).Also, nursing students' capacity for initiative and independence in learning refer to their ability to use their own resources and to seek information without constantly following instructions (Bhandari, Chopra, & Singh, 2020).Creativity is defined as the propensity of nursing students to come up with or identify concepts, options, or opportunities during the learning process (Lee, 2021).Openness to learning opportunities is referred to the disposition of nursing students to focus on free and open educational resources that they can use, modify, and share (Poorchangizi et al., 2019).Self-concept as an effective learner is the perception of nursing students about their traits, actions, and capabilities for learning (Ismail, Ali, & Us, 2022).Selfmanagement refers to a nursing student's capacity to direct their actions, thoughts, and feelings in a deliberate and beneficial manner during the learning process (Duprez, Beeckman, Van-Hecke, & Verhaeghe, 2020).Today's highly successful colleges and universities are distinguished by their ability to have their faculties continue to improve their efforts to advance student learning and promote sustainable development behaviors (Sass et al., 2020).Sustainability describes to the ability to meet current requirements without compromising the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own needs.Sustainability seeks to prevent the depletion of natural or physical resources so that they will remain available for the long term (Wright, Ritter, & Wisse-Gonzales, 2022).The main goal of sustainable development is to improve the value of life on earth (Markard, Geels, & Raven, 2020).Many successful colleges and universities have committed to sustainable goals, such as reducing their environmental footprints and conserving resources (Naidoo & Fisher, 2020).
To achieve a higher level of sustainability, it is very important for the university to be concerned with the behavior of its students, employees and teaching staff (Tribelhorn, 2023).Sustainable development behavior can be defined as a set of human activities intended to preserve and maintain both the physical and social environment, thus contributing to the present and future generations' quality of life without endangering the biosphere's resources (Žalėnienė & Pereira, 2021).According to Badea, Șerban-Oprescu, Dedu, and Piroșcă (2020) several elements are required to achieve sustainability objectives and put sustainable development into practice.Thus, it is not enough to merely transfer knowledge to students about sustainable behaviors, because a high level of knowledge does not certify that they will carry out this kind of behavior (Sharpley, 2020).González-Salamancan, Agudelo, and Salinas (2020) study emphasizes that students should be taught to understand and identify solutions to social, environmental, and economic challenges in order to collectively implement sustainable actions.From an educational perspective, this means involving students in the consulting activity, creating educational plans, organizing events and lectures, and carrying out actions by way of example.Along the academic road, it also identifying and building strong human interactions that lead to meaningful learning to solve socio-environmental issues (HanafieDas et al., 2020

Setting:
The current study was carried out at Faculty of Nursing Tanta University.

Subjects:
The study's participants were recruited by proportionate stratified random sampling.
In this study, each academic year was considered as a stratum and the samples were selected based on the proportion of the number of nursing students in each academic year (2022/2023).It had taken as following (first level=220, second level=283, third level=228, and fourth level=214).The total number of the study sample was (945) who were enrolled during data collection time.

Tools of data collection:
To achieve the aim of study, the following two tools were used; All the answers were allocated on a 5-point Likert Scale that ranged from ( 1) "not at all" to (5) "a great extent".The total score was calculated by summing of all categories and then will be calculated according to statistical cut-off point where: -Score from (63-105) considered "high sustainable behavior level".-Score from (42-62) denoted "moderate sustainable behavior level".-Score from (21 -41) pointed for "low sustainable behavior level".

Table (1):
Represents the personal characteristics of nursing students.As noticed in the table, the nursing students' ages ranged between 18 up to 25 years old, with the mean age of 20.86 ± 1.33.About two-thirds (64.44%) of the total nursing students were females.Around one third (29.95%) of the nursing students were in third level.While near to quarter (23.6%) of them had been studied 32 courses and more than three-quarters (76.4%) of them had non-credit hours as a pattern of education.
Also, more than half (59.37%) of nursing students had excellent degree or "A" as a last academic achievement.

Figure (1):
Reveals the nursing students' levels of self-directed learning readiness.This figure shows that more than threequarters (78.73%) of nursing students had a high level of self-directed learning readiness.As well 18.62% of nursing students had a moderate level of selfdirected learning readiness, while the lowest percent (2.65%) of them had a low level of self-directed learning readiness.

Table (3):
Indicates the levels of sustainable development behavior among nursing students.It demonstrated that more than three-quarters (80.0%) of nursing students had a high level of economical domain.Additionally, near to three-quarters (73.23%) of nursing students had a high level of social domain and more than two-thirds (68.89%) of nursing students had a high level of environmental domain.

Table (4):
Donates the relation between nursing students' levels of self-directed learning readiness and their personal characteristics.Based on this table, there wasn't statistically significant difference between nursing students' personal characteristics and their overall levels of self-directed learning readiness except with their pattern of education at (p=0.036).

Table (5):
Points out the relation between nursing students' levels of sustainable development behavior and their personal characteristics.Accordingly, there was statistically significant difference between nursing students' personal characteristics and their overall levels of sustainable development behavior except with their last academic achievement at (p=0.435).

Figure (3):
Illustrates correlation between total of self-directed learning readiness and total of sustainable development behavior in nursing students.It indicates a highly significant positive correlation between total of self-directed learning readiness and total of sustainable development behavior in nursing students at (p < 0.001) and (r = 0.787)

Discussion
The capacity for self-learning is essential for undergraduate students to participate in lifelong learning.Being self-directed in their own education not only helps students acquire professionalism, self-confidence, and implementation competencies, but it also keeps them flexible, adaptable, and open to change as they continue their professional growth.Hence, self-directed learning (SDL) is a key component of sustainability in nursing education.In light of this, nursing students need to be ready for a new professional role in sustainable development, so it's important to evaluate their attitudes and behaviors towards sustainability (Álvarez-Nieto, Álvarez-García, Parra-Anguita, Sanz-Martos, & López-Medina, 2022).The present study results revealed that more than three-quarters of nursing students had a high level of self-directed learning readiness.This study result may be interpreted by that more than two-thirds of nursing students were female, who are more likely to take initiatives to be self-developed than male due to personality differences.Also, around twothirds of nursing students have excellent or "A" degree as the last academic achievement since there is positive relation between SDLR and academic success.Along with the present finding, Govindan, Singh, Ling, and Sekar (2023) who revealed a high readiness for SDL among students.On the other hand, Ahmad, Saad, Aminuddin, and Abdullah (2023) who incongruent with these results and found that the majority of students fall into the "Below average" category of SDLR.The present study results demonstrated that the majority of nursing students had a high level of positive orientation to the future.This result means that they did their best to achieve their long-term objectives.On the same scene, Dai, Teo, Rappa, and Huang (2020) showed that a positive attitude is a significant predictor of the intention to continue learning in the future.On the other hand, Yuwita and Ambarwati, (2023) who displayed that most of the students had undesirable attitudes about learning English words.The present study results demonstrated that the majority of nursing students love their learning in a high level.This result means that they find the learning to be enjoyable and admire people who never stop learning.At the same line, Anwar et al., (2021) who revealed that the participants possess a high level of desire of learning in SDLR.Besides, Heo and Han, (2022) who stated that a decrease in motivation among online learners could lead to a reduction in their SDLR.The present study results showed that the majority of nursing students had a high level of the ability to use basic study and problemsolving skills.This result may be due to that they think it is crucial to learn how to acquire knowledge.Along with the present finding, Sari, (2022) who noted that students who engaged in self-directed learning were able to improve their academic performance.While Thuy and Thuy, (2022) contradicted this result, who found that students' level of SDLR in solving problems is poor.The present study results showed that the majority of nursing students had a high level of informed acceptance of responsibility for one's own learning.This finding may be explained by that they believe that it's their responsibility if they didn't grow as learners.This result is supported by, Slam, (2021) who shown that students who have more academic responsibilities also exhibit more powerful self-belief.Also, this result is inconsistent with Ozkan and Er, (2020) who stated that participants' behaviors within the framework of learning responsibility indicate a strong negative relation with their preparedness for their career.
The present study results revealed that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level of initiative and independence in their learning.This finding clarified that they were capable of finding methods to learn everything they'd like.This result is similar to the result of a study by Gorostiaga et al., (2019) who displayed that proactiveness, effectiveness, and educational orientation are the dimensions associated with entrepreneurship.On the other hand, Allam, Hassan, Mohideen, Ramlan, and Kamal (2020) who demonstrated that low level of self -directed learning in undergraduate students.The present study results revealed that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level of creativity.This finding showed that they enjoy trying new things, even when they were unsure of how they would come out.This result confirmed by Schutte and Malouff, (2020) who found that a higher level of curiosity was significantly linked with those participants who had a higher level of creativity.The present study results revealed that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level of openness to learning opportunities.This finding illustrated that they were enthusiastic about what they were learning.Along with the present finding, Van-Ness et al., (2020) they confirmed that openness to new experiences is an important feature that characterizes proactive persons.This result is inconsistent with Chomeya, Phansri, and Piyakun (2022) who reported that students from Thailand scored low on openness to learning alternatives.The present study results revealed that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level of self-concept as effective learners.This finding explained that they had the capacity to learn practically anything they needed to know on their own.This result was consistent with the findings of Wolters and Brady, (2021) who demonstrate that students who are good at managing their time can actively control tasks that are considered essential.The present study results reported that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level of self-management.This finding clarified that they had self-control and depended on themselves to continue their education.This result is supported by Jasim, (2020) who demonstrated that self-management helps students develop into successful learners.On the other hand, Ansong, Eisensmith, Okumu, and Chowa (2019) who confirmed that students who lack confidence in their own abilities may be less willing to strive for academic achievement.The present study results displayed that more than two-thirds of nursing students had a sustainable development behavior in high level.This study result may be interpreted by that around two-thirds of nursing students were women, who are more likely than men to take the charge to improve themselves because of variations in personality.As well as, around two-thirds of nursing students have an excellent or "A" degree as their last academic achievement because sustainable development behavior and academic achievement are positively related to each other.Along with the present finding, Aronsson et al., (2020) who highlighted that participant in sustainabilityfocused training may find it easier to integrate change management and sustainable development.Also, Tsarfati and Cojocaru, (2022) who indicated that participants who had easy access to computers and a wide range of professional experience would enhance nursing practice and care quality.On the other side, the present study's findings are incongruent with those of Leppanen, Kvist, McDermott, and Kankkunen (2022) who revealed participants' knowledge of sustainable development (SD) principles was poor.
The present study results revealed that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level regarding the environmental domain of sustainable development behavior.This finding explained that they were aware of the effects of environmental changes on faculty workflow.Along with the present finding, Ryan, Dubrow, and Sherman (2020) indicated that students in Sweden and the US were aware of the negative effects of climate change, While Moselhy, Galal, and Abdel Elrahman (2022) who noticed that two-thirds of the Egyptian student participants were unaware of the idea of carbon footprints.The present study results assured that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level regarding the economic domain of sustainable development behavior.This finding explained that they behave in the manner leading to energy conservation.At the same line, Ergin et al., (2021) who explored what nursing students did on a personal level to combat climate change, and discovered a variety of actions like forest management.Nevertheless, Ismail and AbdElkhalek, (2021) revealed that behavioral economics had a minor role in creating environmental policies for sustainable development in Egypt.The present study results pointed out that a high percentage of nursing students had a high level regarding the social domain of sustainable development behavior.This finding may be due to they encourage friends to practice proenvironmental behavior at the faculty.On the same scene, the study's results of Algabar et al., (2023) who found that participants' attitudes had a high level of sustainable consciousness (SC).This result disagrees with Yli-Panula, Jeronen, Vesterkvist, and Tolonen (2021) who showed that the social dimension of sustainable development had a lower level than the other dimensions.The current study's data analysis explains that there wasn't statistically significant difference between nursing students' personal characteristics and their overall levels of selfdirected learning readiness except with their pattern of education.Additionally, the data analysis of the present study clarifies that there was a statistically significant difference between the sociodemographic characteristics of nursing students and their levels of sustainable development behavior except with their last academic achievement.
As observed in this study, there was a correlation between nursing students' levels of self-directed learning readiness and their levels of sustainable development behavior.This study result might be interpreted by that selfdirected learning enhances nursing students' innovative and critical thinking abilities, which are the cornerstones of enabling nursing students to engage in sustainability.Nursing students can sustain their behaviors by being flexible, adaptable, and self-directed in their learning.Hence, self-directed learning readiness is an essential element of sustainability in nursing students' education.Along with the present finding, Čiarnienė, Vienažindienė, and Adamonienė (2020) who revealed that learning had an important impact on ecological and economical sustainable behaviors and attitudes among their participants.In addition, loeng, (2020) who supported that it is essential for students to have faith in their abilities to study, which will in turn help them achieve their objectives, be more persistent, and become lifelong learners.At the same line, Álvarez-Nieto et al., (2022) who signified that an improvement in the environmental consciousness and attitudes of nursing students towards sustainability and climate change as their education progresses.

Conclusion
Based on the results of this study, there were statistically positive correlations between overall nursing students' self-directed learning readiness and their perception regarding sustainable development behavior.

Recommendations
The findings of the present study directed to recommend the following: For the faculty's administration Figure (2): Nursing students' levels of sustainable development behavior (n = 945)

Figure ( 1 )
Figure (1): Correlation between total of self-directed learning readiness and total of sustainable development behavior in nursing students (n=945)

Table ( 5): Relation between nursing students' levels of sustainable development behavior and their personal characteristics (n = 945) Personal characteristics Levels of sustainable development behavior in nursing students
*: Statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05.