Scholarship: A New Model to Promote Faculty and Student Success in Nursing Education

Scholarship: A New Model to Promote Faculty and Student Success in Nursing Education

Brief Abstract

Scholarship is fundamental to students’ pursuing academic progression at the graduate level and faculty working toward promotion and tenure. To enable student and faculty success, it is vital to clarify expectations for scholarship at different levels of graduate study and academic promotion. This presentation will focus on a new model to support and advance scholarship at different levels within nursing education. The presenters will involve the audience in a discussion about the distinctions between levels and the positive implications for students, faculty, and nursing education.  

Full Abstract

The importance of scholarship to advance nursing education has garnered national attention. However, the difference between the Practice of Teaching (including Evidence-based Teaching, Scholarly Teaching, and Quality Improvement in Teaching), the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), and Research in Nursing Education remains unclear within the discipline. These concepts, developed over time and lacking consistent meaning and use, are often used interchangeably. As a result, expectations for scholarship are often unclear. A new model is needed to clearly articulate the differences between levels of scholarship, specifically the Practice of Teaching, the SOTL, and Nursing Education Research. Because all levels are important to the academic tripartite role and contribute differently to the advancement of teaching and learning, a new model is needed to consistently guide academic expectations and associated student and faculty decisions about scholarship and dissemination. The educational preparation of faculty and the expectations of an organization can influence decisions about whether to integrate published evidence from a multi-site study within a course, implement quality improvement initiatives for a program, or conduct multi-site rigorous research studies. Similarly, graduate students’, and advance practice nurses’ work often ranges from discovery and generation of new knowledge that varies from small, poorly constructed studies to large multi-site and repeated measures designs to translation and application of research into practice. Therefore, a model is needed to clarify these levels of scholarship to facilitate consistent academic expectations and enable student/faculty success. The presenters will involve the audience in a discussion about scholarship in nursing education and how the model can be used to support students, faculty, and programs.