The need to prepare and support clinical teaching faculty is identified as a priority by nurse educators. However, there is no framework for understanding the practice of clinical teaching (Benner, Tanner & Chelsa, 1996; Davis, Dearman, Schwab & Kitchens, 1992; Scanlan, 2001; Siler & Kleiner, 2001; Vollman, 1989). There is little nursing research directed to understanding the practice of clinical teaching. It is widely assumed that nurses who are experts in practice are able to make an easy transition to the role of clinical teacher (Scanlan, 2001; Silar & Kleiner, 2001). / The clinical practicum is the time when students are in the clinical setting as novice nurses under the supervision of both experienced nurses and clinical teachers. The clinical setting may be hospital or community-based and students may be working directly with patients and their families or may be a member of a community-based project team. The purpose of this study was, by asking clinical teachers to describe their practice, to determine whether clinical teaching was a boundary practice bridging nursing and teaching's communities of practice (CoP). The goal of the boundary practice is to sustain a connection between the two communities of practice by dealing with conflicts, seeking common ground and resolving problems. The following research questions were asked: (1) To what extent do clinical teachers describe the characteristics of a boundary practice? (2) What are the participative connections that clinical teachers use in their professional activities? and (3) What boundary objects are transferred from one community of practice to another? / Using a qualitative research design, nine clinical teachers from diverse practice settings and with a range of years in the profession participated in a focus group interview. The focus group interview was followed by individual interviews with four clinical teachers. The conceptual framework that guided this study combined Wenger's (1998, 2002) community of practice model, and Shulman's (1987) teacher knowledge model. Additional theoretical constructs included reflective practitioner, cognitive apprenticeship and situated cognition (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Schon, 1987). / The results suggest that clinical teaching is a boundary practice and that clinical teachers create participative connections between nursing and teaching practices through the building of relationships with fellow nurses, students and classroom teachers using strategies that involve reconciling different practice perspectives with the objective of creating supportive clinical learning environments. Clinical teachers described negotiation strategies to move students from the periphery of nursing into the community of nursing practice and using boundary objects to negotiate meaning from practice. / The results suggest that the practice of clinical teaching includes understanding how to balance relationships and reconcile competing demands. The findings also suggest that connection to the classroom teacher and understanding of the course of study are important to the practice of clinical teaching. Two key outcomes of this study are the development of a model of clinical teaching and a working vocabulary to describe the practice of clinical teaching.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85549 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Foulds, Barbara J. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002223641, proquestno: AAINR12842, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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