The purpose of this on-going research study is to investigate the unique teaching practices, grounding experiences, and sources of knowledge used by clinical experts with no formal graduate preparation in education who have transitioned into the role of novice clinical nurse educators. Additionally, how these teaching practices change based on the clinical context is also under investigation
Methods:
Ethnographic research methods use during this investigation include participant observation, ethnographic interviewing, and document analysis. This investigation is guided by the theoretical framework of Knowledge of Content and Students (Hill, Ball, and Shillings, 2008), which was adapted from Shulman’s (1996) model of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, to provide an understanding of the unique knowledge of a teacher in K-12 mathematics education. The framework has been adapted in order guide the observation, analysis, and understanding of teaching practices and sources of knowledge used by novice clinical nursing educators teaching in the patient-care area.
Results:
Preliminary findings of this investigation demonstrate that novice clinical educators utilize teaching methods based on their preferred learning style and/or teaching methods used by former nursing educators who have been influential in their own educational experience. Additional findings demonstrate novice educators often struggle with providing negative or constructive feedback to students in the clinical setting. Additionally, the teaching practices of novice educators often focus on the supervision of students’ patient care, rather than scaffolding students' learning or utilizing teaching methods that promoting critical thinking.
Conclusion:
To meet the demands of increased enrollment, schools of nursing are hiring master’s prepared clinical experts who have no formal preparation in pedagogy to teach in order fill clinical teaching vacancies (Roberts, Chrisman, & Flowers, 2013). Recruiting clinical experts to teach students in the clinical patient-care area may is not an ideal solution to the problem, as proficiency as a clinical nurse does not have a direct correlation with the ability to teach nursing students (Stevens & Duffy, 2017). According to the National League of Nursing (NLN) Scope of Practice for Academic Nurse Educators (2012) Competency I, Facilitating Learning, the academic nursing educator must implement a variety of teaching strategies or practices, grounded in educational theory, that foster’s the transfer of students’ knowledge from the classroom to the clinical setting. Therefore, the clinical nursing educator must have knowledge of and utilize teaching practices that facilitate nursing students’ development of critical thinking skills in the clinical patient-care area setting (Dahlke, Baumbusch, Affleck & Kwon, 2012). Limited research has been conducted to investigate the clinical teaching practices that are specific to novice clinical nursing educators (Crookes, Crookes & Walsh, 2013; Patterson & Klein, 2012). Additionally, there is a currently a lack of research studies drawing on observational data of in-the-moment teaching practices to describe the teaching practices used by novice clinical nursing educators. The findings of this this investigation will add to the limited research available to the nursing education community by offering a detailed description of the teaching practices and teacher knowledge of clinical nurse experts who transition into the role of novice clinical nursing educator.