Exploring Teacher Self-Efficacy in Nurse Educators: A Mixed Method Study

In the face of a rapidly changing healthcare environment and a nursing shortage, schools of nursing are pressed to produce higher numbers of fully prepared nurse graduates. In other disciplines, teacher self-efficacy has been linked to better student outcomes, faculty instructional methods, and student engagement. This construct has not been well studied in nursing education. This mixed methods study investigated how current faculty perceive their teacher self-efficacy as measured by the Self-Efficacy Towards Teaching Inventory-Nursing Education (SETTI-NE) survey and identified contributing factors, followed by interviews gathering qualitative data from nine faculty members of varying SETTI-NE scores as well as varying years of nursing experience, the variable of interest. Guided by Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, this study analyzed 352 predominantly female faculty members a majority of whom were over 60 years of age and found factors that positively correlated with SETTI-NE scores were increased age, years of teaching experience, and doctoral preparation (DNP and Ph.D.). There was no correlation with years of nursing experience. This survey tool is composed of for subscales course preparation, teacher behaviors, examination and evaluation, and clinical practice. The low teacher self-efficacy group scored highest in teacher behaviors, while both the moderate and high teacher self-efficacy groups scored highest in course preparation. All groups scored lowest in clinical practice. This is not a measure of their clinical expertise, but rather their ability to teach and evaluate students in clinical practice. This qualitative data further explained that the personal efficacy component of the teacher self-efficacy score may not be associated with years of clinical experience as suggested previously, but rather how that expertise more closely relates to education theory supporting literature suggesting the concept of teaching as a separate expertise. Integrating these findings with the qualitative data, demonstrated that making connections between clinical experiences and didactic material was more impactful than any other factors. This survey indicated that only 12% of participants included simulation in the academic teaching practice which may have impacted the scores in this subscale. Regardless, faculty must be able to connect these learning activities to the classroom and clinical settings for them to contribute to knowledge gains in students. The qualitative finding that faculty with doctoral preparation, either DNP or Ph.D., were making connections between clinical and classroom, through teaching methods that helped students understand the material and bridge the theory to practice gap in the classroom, not just in clinical may provide the missing piece to bridge theory and clinical. Academic nurse education is a complex field that requires clinical expertise as well as knowledge in educational theories to guide faculty in ensuring students acquire the requisite knowledge to perform the skills and clinical decision making of a nurse