Module Components

• Overview
• Assignments

Topics

• The Teaching Triad: Teaching, Research/Scholarship, and Service
• The Boyer Model
• Faculty Evaluation
• Promotion

NRSG 794 - Introduction to the Nursing Faculty Role

Module 3: The Nursing Faculty Role

The Boyer Model

In the late 1980’s and 1990s’, Dr. Ernest Boyer, a nationally prominent educator, and eventually President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, wrote extensively on how faculty were viewed by the public as well as by institutions, particularly when it came to how they were evaluated in the tripartite (three part) view of teaching, research/scholarship, and service.

His report on “Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990) was a landmark document in that it moved beyond triad of teaching, research/scholarship, and service by re-classifying scholarship into four entities as you see here in this original work in Chapter 2. Pay particular attention to the description of the four types of scholarship identified here if you wish to read the original source.

• the scholarship of Discovery;
  
• the scholarship of Integration;
  
• the scholarship of Application; and
• the scholarship of Teaching.

The table below offers a summary of that report listing the purpose of each type of scholarship and samples of each of these areas.

This work has had a great impact on the nursing profession. The impact is primarily due to the expansion of the more traditional conceptualization of scholarship as solely scientific research in a laboratory, as well as recognition of a much broader scope and contribution of the faculty’s work.

In 1999, an AACN position statement entitled Defining Scholarship for the Discipline of Nursing. This important document took Boyer’s work and applied it directly to the nursing profession. Please read this report carefully as there are many examples of nursing examples of each type of scholarship.

In March, 2018, the American Association of College of Nursing published a Position Statement entitled “Defining Scholarship for Academic Nursing”, expanded the traditional view of scholarship and is particularly relevant to our work in this course. Please take the time to read this document carefully as it offers many examples of various aspects of the faculty role in a way that is consistent with the Boyer Model.

Integrated Scholar

The broad adaptation of integration described in Boyer’s work led to an interesting conceptualization called the Integrated Scholar. Nursing faculty members were encouraged to become much more focused in their work in a particular area of interest for scientific work (research, publications, and presentations). This area often flowed from their clinical interest and expertise and allowed them to effectively integrate discovery of new knowledge, applications to practice areas, and their teaching as a more integrated whole. For example, a faculty member with a keen interest and expertise in patient and family communication could leverage their experience by consulting the evidence, identifying a gap, and then partnering with other faculty to design interactive simulations or learning experiences where students could practice conflict resolution skills in a safe, low-stakes environment, get feedback from faculty, and reflect on their experience before trying again in a real-life clinical setting. Once the teaching technique was evaluated and streamlined, the faculty could share with others via publication or presentation. This cycle is an example of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).

This is good news! Since faculty are working with a unified whole in these four areas, integrated scholars are at an advantage for meeting the expectations of various aspects of their role, and ultimately the criteria for advancing to higher ranks by promotion. We’ll talk more about the mysteries of rank and promotion in the next section.

The Boyer Model is still used in many schools as part of the faculty evaluation. This is particularly useful for faculty who are advanced practice nurses, nurse leaders, community health nurses, informaticians, policy advocates, and a myriad of other nursing roles besides traditional nurse researchers.