J Nurs Educ
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This article explores the concept of evidence-based nursing education. Because nurse educators incorporate evidence-based practice as a basic tenet of their programs, they assume nursing education itself is evidence based. Nursing education has a body of knowledge on which nurse educators base teaching, educational strategies, and curricular designs, but most of this knowledge is tacit, experiential, and based on practice. ⋯ Nurse educators need to develop the science of nursing education through qualitative and quantitative research, to add to the tacit knowledge underpinning nursing education strategies. When the science of nursing education is adequately developed through rigorous research, we will truly be able to say that nursing education is evidence based. Until then, it may be only a myth.
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Review
Merging reflective inquiry and self-study as a framework for enhancing the scholarship of teaching.
This article provides a model for improving teaching practice and developing new knowledge about teaching. The reflective self-study approach to pedagogical inquiry is rooted in reflective inquiry and self-study as found in nursing and education literature, respectively. ⋯ Essential features of the model include interdisciplinarity and collaboration. Using the framework outlined in this article will help establish reflective self-study research as an accepted model of inquiry and further the dialogue on teaching in higher education.
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The literature endorses empowered nurses as essential to changing not only the nursing profession but also the current health care system. Nurse educators have embraced the concept of empowering students. However, faculty frequently enable students rather than empower them in both clinical and classroom settings. ⋯ Collegiality, communication, accountability, and autonomy are components of a model used to compare empowering versus enabling in the academic setting. Nurse educators will become aware of behaviors that sabotage the empowerment of students. Strategies designed to facilitate students' development of empowering behaviors will be provided throughout the article.