This Is AuburnElectronic Theses and Dissertations

Student and Faculty Perceptions of Clinical Teaching Effectiveness of Full-Time and Part-Time Baccalaureate Degree Clinical Nursing Faculty

Date

2006-05-15

Author

Holmes, Susan

Type of Degree

Dissertation

Department

Educational Foundations
Leadership and Technology

Abstract

Schools of Nursing in the United States are experiencing faculty shortages that result in the turning away of qualified student applicants. This trend has continued and even escalated since a 1992 study was published by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. In order to respond to the increasing shortage of nursing faculty, schools of nursing have had to develop creative methods to fill open faculty positions: one method in extensive use is supplementing regular full-time clinical faculty with sessional or part-time clinical faculty. These part-time faculty may have little teaching experience or knowledge of higher education, but they bring a great deal of clinical experience to a program (De Young & Bliss, 1995), which has caused concern in nursing education with the quality of education provided by these individuals (Myrick, 1991). One way to assess the quality of education is to assess teacher effectiveness. The instrument used for this study to assess teacher effectiveness was the Nursing Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI) (Knox & Mogan, 1985). It consisted of 48 items grouped into five subsets: teaching ability, nursing competence, interpersonal relationships, personality of the teacher, and evaluation of students. Faculty and student respondents from two schools of nursing in the southeastern United States were asked to complete the NCTEI to evaluate full-time and part-time clinical faculty. Results of the study showed that students did not perceive any statistically significant differences in the effectiveness of instruction provided by part-time and full-time clinical nursing faculty. When both students and faculty responses were analyzed for characteristics representative of the most effective clinical teachers, the single highest-rated survey item was ‘demonstrated strong clinical skills and judgement’ by all respondent groups. The greatest number of items found in this study to represent effective clinical nursing teachers came from the behavior category of Nursing Competence, and none came from the behavior category of Ability to Evaluate Students.