Effect of Nurse Educators Teaching Style on Learning of Baccalaureate Nursing Students in Clinical learning environment

Abstract

Nursing education is often divided into two distinctive types of courses which are both important and provide different contributions to learning namely; theoretical and practical courses. Clinical courses in the nursing baccalaureate program consist about 54% of the whole curriculum and provides baccalaureate nursing students an opportunity to combine cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills. Teaching styles are core to the teaching role of any educator in order to assist students in a learning situation to maximize their full potential to learn. Therefore, investigating the educational processes included a survey of the preferred teaching styles among the nurse education faculty based on the premise that quality teaching contributes to quality learning. Hence, the present study aims to investigate  nursing students’ perceptions of clinical nurse educators’ teaching styles and their learning in clinical practice. A descriptive correctional study was used in carrying out this study. The study was conducted at Faculty of Nursing at King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia. All nursing students enrolled in the Faculty of Nursing from five levels of academic year, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth at the time of the study of the academic year 2015-2016 were included in the study(n= 196). Three tools were used for data collection namely; Clinical Nurse Educators Teaching Style Questionnaire, Students’ Self-assessment Clinical Practice Scale, and Student Clinical Training Experience Satisfaction Scale. Based on the study findings of this study, it could be found clinical nurse educators teaching style was significantly correlated with students’ self-assessment clinical practice and their learning satisfaction. Flexibility for personal development teaching style dimension not significantly correlated statistically with students’ self-assessment clinical practice and their learning satisfaction. It was concluded that total mean of clinical nurse educator teaching style is 149.566 mean score which indicate they used student-centered approach in clinical learning environment and the student reported moderate satisfaction about learning. It is recommended to the learning in the clinical setting required knowledgeable and experienced clinical instructors with the ability to teach adult learners effectively and used learner-centered approach in clinical learning environment that had students' positive learning outcomes.