Scholarship revisited: a Collaborative Nursing Education Program's journey.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Higher Education
• Curriculum Studies

Background:

• The Collaborative Nursing Program in British Columbia comprises 10 diverse post-secondary institutions.
• The program received a 7-year accreditation in November 2000 from the Canadian Association of University Schools of Nursing.
• Partners have increasingly adopted a scholarly approach to their collaborative work.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the journey of exploring the meaning of scholarship within a multi-institutional nursing program.
• To examine how Boyer's model of scholarship informs curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation.
• To assess the application of scholarship criteria across partner institutions.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative descriptive approach detailing the partners' experiences.
• Application of Boyer's model of scholarship (discovery, integration, application, teaching).
• Evaluation against criteria from "Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professorate".

Main Results:

• The collaborative partners engaged in a process of defining and applying scholarship.
• Boyer's model provided a framework for evaluating diverse scholarly activities.
• The journey involved understanding scholarship both collectively and within individual nursing schools.

Conclusions:

• Collaborative nursing programs can systematically explore and integrate scholarship into their educational practices.
• A shared understanding of scholarship enhances curriculum development and evaluation.
• The process fostered a scholarly identity across the partnership.