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American Association of Colleges of Nursing ADVANCING HIGHER EDUCATION IN NURSING
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Home / Leading Initiatives / Publications / Position Statements / Defining Scholarship for the Discipline of Nursing
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Position Statements
Purpose: This document provides standards that clarify and describe a full range of scholarship within the discipline of nursing. In particular, this statement focuses on four aspects of scholarship that are salient to academic nursing-- discovery, teaching, applications in clinical practice, and integration of ideas from nursing and other disciplines. These areas support the values of a profession committed to both social relevance and scientific advancement. This document is not intended as prescriptive, or as exclusive of other considerations. It is a descriptive tool, and may be used to guide promotion, tenure, and merit reviews in a way that is appropriate to the profession; expand the scope of recognized scholarly activities; guide individual career planning; and demonstrate the growth of the profession over time. The unique culture and context of each academic institution, and the priorities of each nursing unit, will determine the relevance and value of the proposed standards within its own setting.
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Purpose: This document provides standards that clarify and describe a full range of scholarship within the discipline of nursing. In particular, this statement focuses on four aspects of scholarship that are salient to academic nursing-- discovery, teaching, applications in clinical practice, and integration of ideas from nursing and other disciplines. These areas support the values of a profession committed to both social relevance and scientific advancement. This document is not intended as prescriptive, or as exclusive of other considerations. It is a descriptive tool, and may be used to guide promotion, tenure, and merit reviews in a way that is appropriate to the profession; expand the scope of recognized scholarly activities; guide individual career planning; and demonstrate the growth of the profession over time. The unique culture and context of each academic institution, and the priorities of each nursing unit, will determine the relevance and value of the proposed standards within its own setting.
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Colleges and universities across the nation are striving to meet the challenges of rapidly changing educational systems, and are reconsidering the role of the faculty in an increasingly complex learning environment. An important part of that role is the creation of scholarship pertinent to the discipline of the individual faculty member. Many academic disciplines such as history, engineering, social work, psychology, business, education, and many others are in the process of redefining the traditional boundaries of scholarship, and are examining the faculty reward system that perpetuates these boundaries (Diamond & Adam, 1995; Glassick, Huber, & Maeroff, 1997).
Nowhere is this dialogue more pertinent than in nursing, where rigorous scholarly inquiry must be applied in the realities and demands of practice. Nursing faculty, like others whose discipline brings together scientific investigation and application through professional services, often function in a system designed to reward and promote a narrow definition of academic success. Nursing, however, may have priorities for teaching, scholarship, and service that are linked directly to the goals of the profession.
Boyer (1990) challenged all disciplines to embrace the full scope of academic work, moving beyond an exclusive focus on traditional and narrowly defined research as the only legitimate avenue to further the knowledge of the discipline, and to obtain rewards for professorial performance. He proposed that scholarship involves four areas that are critical to academic work. These are the scholarship of
...discovery, where new and unique knowledge is generated;
...teaching, where the teacher creatively builds bridges between his or her own understanding and the students' learning;
...application, where the emphasis is on the use of new knowledge in solving society's problems; and ...integration, where new relationships among disciplines are discovered.
These four aspects of scholarship are salient to academic nursing, where each specified area supports the values of a profession committed to both social relevance and scientific advancement. This document builds upon the work of Boyer (1990) and Diamond & Adam (1995); the rich history of nursing scholarship (Donaldson & Crowley, 1978; Stevenson, 1988); and statements by members of the profession that clarify the beliefs and