The Pedagogical Practices of Clinical Nurse Educators

Clinical practica forms an important component in undergraduate nursing education, which directly involves clinical nurse educators who are primarily involved in teaching student nurses. The purpose of this study was twofold: to theorize the pedagogical practices of clinical nurse educators and to explore the challenges that they encountered while teaching in the clinical arena. These participants taught in undergraduate nursing programs in a large metropolitan city in Ontario, Canada. Grounded theory methodology forwarded by Charmaz (2010) was used in this study design, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve clinical nurse educator participants. Coding strategies forwarded by Corbin and Strauss (2008, 2015) and Charmaz (2010, 2011), such as constant comparison and theoretical sampling, were used to analyze the data. Study results were further analyzed using a constructivist approach to learning and a critical pedagogical approach to education. Initially, five main concepts emerged from the data and these concepts were further conceptualized to form the central theory that underpins this study. The substantive theory in this study is: The pedagogical practices of clinical nurse educators and the navigation of constraints in complex educational institutions. This central theory encompasses the main concepts and includes, the forms of knowledge that participants portrayed in their teaching, the ethics in teaching that underpin their practice, varied approaches to teaching that emerged from the data, and the context which describes the teaching milieu. The results from this study provide a deeper and broader understanding of teaching in the clinical arena. The results also reveal a traditional and progressive approach to teaching in nursing education and how each approach effects curricula development, pedagogy, and the building of teacher-student partnerships. The results from this study led to two important recommendations: the first, an education program for all nurse educators so as to improve their knowledge and understanding in developing curricula and pedagogy in nursing education; and the second provides a re-conceptualist approach to developing undergraduate nursing curricula and re-conceptualizing of patient safety concepts in the development, design and implementation of nursing curricula in undergraduate nursing programs.Ph.D