Towards a plurality of perspectives for nurse educators

Abstract

Most of the literature on teaching within nursing education presents teaching and learning strategies as unproblematic and widely generalized across contexts, content, learners, and educators. We argue that to be truly effective, teaching strategies must be harmonious with instructor's beliefs, intentions, and actions. In this paper, we introduce the notion of a plurality of effective teaching based on five different 'perspectives on teaching'--each composed of different beliefs, intentions, actions, and strategies and illustrated by cases from nursing education. We propose that this foundational conceptualization provides a base from which nurse educators can (1) communicate across differences of philosophical perspective and intent; and (2) critically reflect on their educational practices.