181chapter SEVEN
The Role of the Educator
Ruth A. Wittmann- Price , Roberta Waite , and Debra L. Woda
■ NURSING FACULTY SHORTAGE
Nursing education is in more of a precarious position today than it was at the first writ-
ing of this chapter in 2011. As the great basketball coach John Wooden stated, “Failure is
not fatal , but failure to change might be.” Even though nursing education has changed,
progressed, and added innovation, the desperate need for qualified nurse educators is
actually worsening by overtaxing current resources without an adequate succession
plan. The world of doctoral nursing education is being built around the pillars of nurs-
ing practice and nursing research, with only secondary attention given to nursing edu-
cation other than to profess the shortage of nurse educators.
Agreement about nurse educators’ qualifications has come to somewhat of a con-
sensus in the past 5 years with leading nursing organizations (American Association
of Colleges of Nursing [AACN] and National League for Nursing [NLN]) recognizing
that a doctoral nursing degree alone does not unquestionably qualify a nurse to teach
and function effectively in academia. Lack of knowledge about nursing education and/
or academia is well documented in nursing literature and can be verified by asking
any nurse educator who has entered academia from practice to recount his or her story
(Aquadro & Bailey, 2014; Cranford, 2013; Singh, Pilkington, & Patrick, 2014). Both orga-
nizations, AACN and NLN, recognize and address the nurse educator shortage, but nei-
ther offers a concrete solution, nor are there any easy solutions to offer. AACN (2016a)
honors its original vision that academic nurse educators be doctorally prepared and
have preparation in educational methods and pedagogies (AACN, 2008). In addition,
AACN views the master’s- prepared nurse educator as an individual who is eligible to
teach families and students in the clinical setting (AACN, 2016a ).
The NLN recognizes the need for nursing education courses in both master’s and
doctoral curricula for nurses who teach either in academia or a clinical learning envi-
ronment. The NLN urgently articulated the need for qualified nurse educators in the
following manner (2010):
There is growing apprehension among deans and directors that advanced
practice graduates who work as full- and part- time faculty but are not edu-
cated in pedagogy, evaluation, and educational theory cannot engage mean-
ingfully in nursing education research or make evidence- based contributions