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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. The model offers nurse educators a mechanism by which they can better understand themselves as teachers and how their teaching affects students. Essential features of the model include interdisciplinarity and collaboration. Using the framework outlined Ln this article will help establish reflective self-study research as an accepted model of inquiry and further the dialogue on teaching in higher education.
As an interdisciplinary team of university faculty from nursing, business administration, and education, the authors ere "double practitioners" (i.e., professional practitioners in their individual fields who also practice teaching). Excellence in teaching in any practice-based discipline is critical for transmitting new knowledge to the discipline's practitioners (Bobbi tt, 1985) and has importance not only for the profession but, ultimately, for the public with whom the practitioners interact (Krisman-Scott, Kershbaumer, & Thompson, 1998). This article describes one approach, reflective self-study, that nursing faculty can use to enhance the scholarship of teaching by improving their teaching practice and creating pedagogical content knowledge (i.e., an understanding of how to teach specific domains of knowledge) (Shulman, 1986).
Beyond institutional programs directed toward developing faculty as teachers (e.g., teaching seminars), new methodologies are required that facilitate instructional improvement and generate pedagogical knowledge. Currently, there are few scholars who contribute to the body of knowledge on teaching and learning in higher education (Weimer, 2000). This comes as no surprise given the general lack of rewards conferred on universitylevel teaching. In addition, most faculty, with the exception of those in the education field, are taught research methods specific to their disciplines, rather than methodologies targeted toward studying teaching. Often, when there are reports in the literature on teaching innovations or new pedagogical methods, the studies rarely provide any analysis of how the innovations worked, other than faculty reports of how students said they liked or did not like the approaches. Formal methods for developing and evaluating new models of teaching are largely missing (Martsolfetal., 1999).
To benefit both teaching and nursing practice, nurse educators must not only understand and articulate the theories relevant to...