Critical Exploration of Educational Identity and Role - Essay Example

Critical Exploration of Educational Identity and Role Introduction Throughout the history of nursing, critical reflection has been the dominant focus of clinical education for the future nursing and health care professionals. Present day systems of nursing education rely on a combination of theoretical and apprenticeship-like approaches to learning (Delany & Watkin 2009). Students in nursing courses are consistently exposed to a wide range of personal and clinical experiences. More often than not, learners in nursing environments acquire their knowledge and skills from experts, with the goal of manipulating, improving, and expanding their expertise (Delany & Watkin 2009). Yet, as new models of learning and education emerge, educators in clinical nursing find it more and more difficult to identify their roles and functions. Nurse educators face a number of challenges, of which the most important is the challenge of self-identification, both personally and professionally. This is where critical reflection comes into play. Through critical reflection and appraisal, nurse educators can review their professional roles and functions and use their personal knowledge and experiences to construct a unique, positive professional identity. What Am I? I am a nurse educator working extensively with student nurses in mental health, training to be a nurse tutor. I deliver mentorship updates, sign off final year students as fit to register, teach in HEI’s, carry out student assessments in practice, teach in clinical practice, assess student competencies and proficiencies. These, however, are surface obligations and functions. At a deeper level, one of the fundamental questions I constantly try to answer is what I really am, personally and professionally. Another question is what role I am expected to play as a nurse educator and what I can do to meet students’ expectations and goals. The question of what I really am has far-reaching implications for my nurse educator roles. However, I should begin by identifying my own place and role first, as a person and, then, as a professional nurse and nurse educator. Speaking about myself as a personality, I invariably recognize the profound effects which my personal attributes and level of thinking produce on my identity as a nurse educator. I believe that understanding my views and levels of knowing is possible, with the help of Carper’s Fundamental Patterns of Knowing (1978). According to Carper (1978), the patterns of knowing include: (a) empirical knowing, or science; (b) ethical knowing, or morality; (c) personal knowing; and (d) aesthetical knowing (the art of nursing). Throughout my professional career and even at present, I view myself as a person highly concerned with “encountering and actualizing of the concrete individual self” (White 1995, p.79). I realize that I cannot know myself completely; nor can I know completely the learners and students I work with. As such, my primary goal is not to know everything about myself but, rather, to know myself (White 1995). At the personal level of knowing, the way I see the world changes and represents itself in totally different colors. As I am striving to know my own self, I also approach my students as the objects of an authentic, self-fulfilling relationship. Even if I am not fully aware of what constitutes my own self, I allow students to matter and contribute to the development of sustained authentic relationships (White 1995). When I say that I do not know myself completely, I also accept a possibility that my students and the people I work with can help me to develop a better view of my professional and personal identity. However, the threats to knowledge and education at this level of knowing should not be disregarded. While trying to understand my self and develop a better view of my personal identity, I face the risks of turning into a passive element of the apprentice-type system of nurse education (White 1995). Simultaneously, I am still one step away from achieving the ultimate goal of being a perfect guide through the aesthetics and art of nursing. I feel that, as I work with adult students, I need to be more cautious with my commitments to personal knowledge and theory, and work hard to move onto a higher level of knowing in nursing. I must realize that, according to Jean Watson (1991), “nursing science has to work at changing its lens to see anew and appreciate some of its beauty, art, and humanity as well as its science” (p.8). The question of who I really am cannot be limited to personal considerations. I am a nurse educator, but I am also a nurse, and I have my nursing principles, ideals and values to which I am committed and which I promote. I believe that identifying these values and ideals is crucial for understanding my role as a nurse educator: eventually, these values and ideals will impact my students, directly and indirectly. Back to Jean Watson, I identify my professional belonging with her theory of human caring. The theory was developed in 1980s but remains relevant in present-day clinical environments (Daniels & Daniels 2004). Like Watson, I believe that caring is the center of nursing (Daniels & Daniels 2004). Like Watson, I also think that caring is a strong unifying force across all nursing disciplines. As a nurse, I am a person who views love and care for patients as the primary professional obligations. These are the values I try to instill on my students. Nurses are expected to contribute to the humanization of the world (Daniels & Daniels 2004). We, nurses, are expected to provide and sustain a unity of the mind, body, and soul in ourselves and our patients (Daniels & Daniels 2004). Everything we learn and everything we teach in clinical practices should be directed at enabling patients to develop a better harmony with their minds, bodies, and souls. To meet this goal, nurses should be first to achieve such harmony within themselves. This is also one of the major goals of nurse education as I see it. In mental health environments where I work and where the complexities inherent in the mind-body relationship come to the surface, achieving the desired harmony is not an easy task. In their way to the holistic view of ourselves and our personality, we are expected to pass all stages of knowing, as proposed by Carper (1978). We are also expected to use our knowledge of selves to help other adult learners to learn more about their identity. What Am I as a Nurse Educator? If challenges faced by nurses in their analysis of the personal and professional self are more or less clear, the question of what it really takes to be a nurse educator continues to persist. Even more important is the question of what it means to be a GOOD nurse educator. Here, it should be noted, that education has long been one of the major components of standard care provision by nurses (Bastable 2002). The role of nurse as an educator is deeply embedded in all major philosophies of nursing care (Bastable 2002). Apparently, all nurses, regardless of their specialization or level education, are educators to some extent. Even if nurses simply teach patients to measure their blood pressure or manage their glucose levels, they can already regard themselves as educators. Today, when education is widely recognized as one of the central responsibilities assumed by nurses (Bastable 2002), the major question is what it means to be a nurse educator. Clearly, being a nurse educator is something different than being a nurse, and the scope of responsibilities carried by nurse educators in clinical settings exceeds that of nurses. When I think of myself as a nurse educator, I often refer to Florence Nightingale, who is often considered as the most prominent nurse educator in the history of nursing. The contribution she made to nursing education and the nursing discipline can hardly be overstated. She devoted herself to learning and educating those who wanted to provide nursing care (Bastable 2002). She taught physicians and future nurses, and even health officials about the importance of professional nursing care in health care settings (Bastable 2002). Certainly, my role as a nurse educator is much more modest than the contribution made by Florence Nightingale. Yet, as I develop new competencies, answering the question of what it means to be a nurse educator is the same as answering the question of whether I do everything right to help my students achieve their learning and professional objectives. The better I understand my nurse educator roles, the more capable I will be of delivering quality learning to adult learners. Because I care for my students and I expect that students will care for their patients, me and my students must understand what role I play as a nurse educator in their professional successes and growth. First and foremost, when looking into myself as a nurse educator, I experience tensions and face a conflict of roles. This is actually the conflict that was discussed by Humphreys, Gidman and Andrews (2000): the researchers suggest that while the primary function of nurses is to deliver care, the primary role of a nurse educator is to teach and facilitate learning. In other words, a nurse who ceases being a nurse and becomes a nurse educator automatically loses its “caring” designation. This is the care-or-not-to-care conflict I sometimes experience, when thinking about my nurse educator roles. From my experiences, caring should be present in all aspects of nursing, including education. Nurse educators should display care for their students and teach them to care for their patients. This is actually what happens at Carper’s (1978) personal level of knowing: as previously mentioned, I allow students to participate in an authentic learning relationship and make them feel that they do matter in the educational and clinical decisions made during the learning process. I do not agree with Humphreys, Gidman and Andrews (2000) in that nurse educators cannot be caring. On the contrary, nurse educators must be caring, simply because they are in pivotal role to acquire the skills and knowledge required to equip nurses with caring practices (Oermann & Heinrich 2005). Although the nursing profession constantly grows and expands, caring does not lose its relevance. As a nurse educator, I see myself in place to create the foundation for novice nurses’ developmental history and develop the conditions needed to deliver safe patient care (Oermann & Heinrich 2005). To achieve these goals, nurse educators should necessarily focus their efforts on competence and motivational caring (Oermann & Heinrich 2005). As a nurse educator, I should see myself as a role model for our students and take our personal inventory to motivate the delivery of outstanding nursing practices and constantly renew ourselves (Oermann & Heinrich 2005). This is also how we can achieve the final level of aesthetic knowing about nursing (Porter 2010). How to Educate? How to deliver knowledge and teach learners in ways that enable them to achieve their goals and realize themselves professionally? This is one of the main questions I ask myself. As a nurse educator, I am increasingly concerned about the quality of my learning strategies and decisions. Needless to say, my role perceptions and nurse educator functions greatly influence the way I teach my students. In agreement with Bastable (2002), I view myself as a facilitator, who is obliged to create an environment conductive to learning. Simultaneously, “the assessment of learning needs, the designing of a teaching plan, the implementation of instructional methods and materials, and the evaluation of teaching and learning should include by both the educator and the learner” (Bastable 2002, p.14). As a nurse educator, I should avoid directive and apply to nondirective learning approaches. However, before learners are engaged in the development of effective instructional methods, I should decide which theories, frameworks, and models fit the learning environment in which we work. Another question is in how to combine these approaches for the benefit of teaching, learning, and students’ self-fulfillment. This is where, from being a nurse educator, I should turn into a psychologist. Because, according to Thorndike (1910), psychology makes educational goals clearer and shows us what can be done and what cannot about education, all nurse educators should also be psychologists. Psychology has the potential to help me to choose the most appropriate method of education, by deducing them from the laws of the human nature, from actual working and professional experiences, and by measuring the knowledge and skills of students (Thorndike 1910). The complexity of these skills, abilities and competencies will further predetermine the success of my educational and professional decisions. I am accustomed to the view that learner preparedness does play a considerable role in how different learners approach new knowledge. As a nurse educator (and, to some extent, a psychologist), the choice of teaching strategies will have to depend on the results of detailed needs assessments and learner preparedness evaluations. Even the laws of learning may vary, depending on the degree to which individuals are prepared to enter the learning process (Seligman 1970). Therefore, trying to answer the question of what the best learning strategy is, I should first try to delineate the needs and expectations of learners. Objectively, there is no best method of teaching and learning in nursing. As a nurse educator, I constantly weight the environmental, contextual and personal factors affecting my students/ learners. In the process of education and constant cooperation with adult learners, I have come to regard them as self-directed and self-sufficient, both concepts reflecting the fundamentals of andragogy (Mezirow 1981). I understand that the learning process is student-centered, and decreasing learners’ dependency on educators is one of our main goals (Mezirow 1981). Adult learners expect that I will teach them to use learning resources properly and assist them in defining their learning needs (Mezirow 1981). My learners are holistic personalities, who have already accumulated a solid body of experiences that define their worldview (Mezirow 1998). As such, the choice of particular learning strategies is actually a choice of the best way to integrate learners’ knowledge with the new information provided by the nurse educator (me). Whether I choose problem-based learning (Norman & Schmidt 1992; Schmidt 1993), learning through discovery (Bruner 1961), or transformative learning (Mezirow 1997), the principal goal is to ensure that the theory/ model/ framework is compatible with learners’ expectations, preparedness and skills. This is why I constantly feel that assessing their preparedness and knowledge is one of the greatest challenge I face as a nurse educator. I try to engage adult learners in the process of assessing their needs, but this method has sometimes proved to be ineffective. Most probably, as I am trying to improve my nurse educator competencies, I will have to resort to more than one method of needs assessment, such as reflection in action and gap analysis (Grant 2002). The lack of confidence with regard to needs assessments creates a stimulus for future professional and personal growth, and I need to view effective needs assessment as one of my top priorities for the future. How to Motivate Students? In mental health or any other nursing field, how to motivate students remains one of the most controversial questions. This is also the question I ask myself, as I enter a new course or start with a new group of adult learners. I perceive adult learners as self-directed and self-sufficient, and I implicitly assume that they seek education and learning because they need it, they realize its importance, and they are motivated to aspire for their educational goals. Unfortunately, recent professional experiences have proved most of these assumptions to be invalid. This is why, in this critical reflection, as well as in my studies, I am trying to answer the question of what it really takes to motivate adult learners. The importance of motivation brings me back to where I talked of myself as a psychologist: generally, motivation is a complex psychological process and possible motivators affecting adult learners may include recognition and achievement, advancement and responsibility (Kejawa 2011). However, in my work, I try to avoid any generalizations with regard to motivation and needs. I realize that, although adult learners are self-directed and self-sufficient, they may have different motivations and needs. In my practice, I saw adult learners, who came looking for personal participation and association through group activities, or looking to improve their knowledge in order to meet the new requirements from the agencies with which they were associated, or looking to expand their worldview in order to prepare themselves for participation in group activities, etc. (Morstain & Smart 1977). All those motivations represented different types of learners, and one of the major tasks I now face is to distinguish between these types and try to devise effective models of motivating these adult learners to study. In devising motivational strategies for adult learners, I will have to account for (a) reasons why adult learners chose to continue their study; and (b) the contextual circumstances they find themselves in (Blair, McPake & Munn 1995). These are the two major trends shaping adult learners’ motivations across the curriculum continuum. Today, looking back at my professional experiences and everything I have learned, I also understand that it is at least incorrect to measure adult learners’ preparedness and motivation by the preparedness and motivation of younger aged students. All of us have been students and we remember what drove learning and education in our classes. Everything is different today. Adult learners, more than their high school co-learners, are motivated by external expectations and social welfare goals (Wolfgang & Dowling 1981). All this information can help to delineate the main principles of learning and teaching in mental health environments but cannot deny the importance of learner uniqueness. Every learner is unique, and it is within the nurse educator’s scope of obligations to turn this uniqueness for the benefit of the student and the group of which he (she) is part. As of today, I feel that I have a strong skills and competency basis to improve the quality of teaching I deliver to learners, but there is still a whole way ahead of me, before I can consider myself a true professional. Conclusions: Looking Into the Future This critical reflection has become a unique opportunity to look deeper at my own personality, identity, achievements and problems as a nurse educator. I have realized that, despite considerable improvements I have made during my career as a nurse educator, I am still miles away from being a perfect professional. I face numerous personal and professional challenges. I constantly reassess my professional and personal identity. At times, economic priorities and empirical knowledge lead me away from the morality and art of the nursing practice (Fawcett, Watson, Neuman, Walker & Fitzpatrick 2001; Watson 2006). Therefore, there is still much room for professional and individual improvement. To begin with, I have to develop a clearer vision of my personal identity and move from the personal to aesthetic knowledge of nursing (Carper 1978). Empirics should give way to morality, ethics, and values (Fawcett, Watson, Neuman, Walker & Fitzpatrick 2001; Watson 2006). Although empirical knowledge plays a crucial role in the advancement of nursing science and practices, the aesthetic value of nursing will enable me and my students to spiritualize the vision of health and patient care (Watson 2006). In this context, I will have to deal with the conflict of roles faced by many nurse educators. As a nurse educator, I should not abandon my “caring” attitudes and beliefs. Rather, I will have to learn how transfer these attitudes and roles to learners, to teach them the basics of holistic care in mental health facilities. Furthermore, I will have to develop a coherent teaching framework, based on the assumption that all learners are self-directed and self-sufficient to learn. At present, I am committed to more than one learning theory, including Bruner’s learning through discovery and problem-based learning. I will need to learn how to combine these strategies in ways that meet the unique needs of learners. Finally, I will definitely need more clarity concerning the issue of motivation in mental health nursing. At present, I am not confident that I understand the concept of adult learner motivation in detail. This is why I am willing to continue my education and use my personal knowledge and experience to develop my own vision of motivation in nursing education. Undoubtedly, being a nurse educator is a process involving continuous changes, and one of my primary functions is to renew the knowledge and skills and deliver these skills to students. References Bastable, SB 2002, Nurse as educator: Principles of teaching and learning for nursing practice, Jones & Bartlett Learning. 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