Evaluation of a Study Involving Faculty Development - Essay Example

This paper evaluates a scholarly journal article in which 17 participants involved in nursing education were interviewed in relation to their opinion regarding knowledge, skills development, and the variety of teaching directly related to their in-house professional environment. There are many challenges involved with coordinating an effective EPR program that are largely due to the type of educational facility structure and current level of skills acquisition by teaching staff. The Study’s Intention The research study consisted of qualitative interviews after the researchers selected a sample population of 17 different educators with varying skills acquisition and level of nursing education experience.

A portion of the sample consisted of full-time educators, part-time educators, and those categorized as clinical faculty members. The majority of participants maintained what was considered to be higher-level skills accessibility and were thus mostly considered experts in their field of education. The sample chosen was designed to offer a cross-section of skills application to understand whether needs associated with faculty development were diverse or whether needs in faculty development were similar. . An objective of this qualitative methodology was to ensure that individual respondents could define their opinion of what constituted a peer in the EPR process as well as their belief regarding what tools would be best effective when designing a future EPR program.

The goal of this interview structure was to identify what practices might be ineffective for future EPR programs and also highlight what systems or processes might be most beneficial in a real-time teaching environment. As previously identified, by using expert respondents in the sample chosen, practice versus theory in EPR could be more appropriately identified. Thibault (2011) identifies that if faculty development programs are not structured in a way that is meaningful to the educator, they are not likely to be sustainable over the long-term.

“If the interprofessional teaching is regarded as ‘extra’ or as something that faculty do on a volunteer basis on their own time, it is not likely to be sustainable” (Thibault, 2011, p.314). This assessment by Thibault is supported by the selected research article as the participants in the study identified many different systems-based challenges that frustrated their educator development goals. Two of these challenges included frustration over not understanding how they fit within the system and “lack of stability in courses being taught” (Toth & McKey, 2010, p.56). The article provided results that clearly indicated that there must be a sense of regularity regarding educational peer review programs with marginal room for flexibility in order to gain support or for the educator to find long-term value in the program structure.

In general, short of a few exceptions in the chosen sample group, there was a