Role modelling and students' professional development

BackgroundGender disparity has long been noted in nursing, a predominantly female-dominated profession. However, recently the increase in the number of male nurses disproves the existing belief that nursing is exclusively a female profession. Even though the studies have reported changing gender trends in nursing, the information is not sufficient and the effects of the changing trend on professional practice and professional development have not been explored. Therefore this study aims to assess the influence of gender in nursing on professional practice and development in Tanzania.MethodsThis was an analytical Hospital-Based Cross-sectional Study Design, conducted at four hospitals in Dar es Salaam, with 580 nurses between 20th May and 20th June 2024. Proportionate sampling was used to determine the required number of participants from each of the four facilities. Moreover, systematic random sampling was used to recruit participants from each facility. The validated questionnaire was used to obtain data, which were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics.ResultsAmong seventy items that measured professional practices, sixty three items indicated good professional practices among female nurses compared with their male counterparts male. On the association of gender in nursing to professional practice and development, the findings revealed no significant association between gender in nursing and professional practice (χ2 = 1.384; P = 0.239). Moreover, the item analysis revealed that male nurses have professional development in three items similar to female nurse who had shown professional development on other three items. Through binary logistic regression, male nurses were 0.528 (OR) times less likely to have good professional development than their female counterpart (P < 0.001; 95% CI: 0.379, 0.737). Several social demographic factors were found to be associated with professional practice and development.ConclusionIt was found that professional practice does not depend on gender in nursing, because the practice was optimal across both genders. Nurse’s self-image of nursing, facility factors, and professional development influence their professional practice. Moreover, gender in nursing is associated with professional development, indicating the existence of gender stereotypes in the distribution of opportunities between male and female nurses. The study recommends extending this cross-sectional study to nonclinical settings such as training institutions.

Transformative Learning in Healthcare and Helping Professions Education: Building Resilient Professional Identities is a co-edited book (Carter, Boden, and Peno) with invited chapters from educators who share our passion for learning in healthcare and the helping professions. The purpose of the book is to introduce professional learners (students, residents, and others in professional training) to transformative learning for building resilient professional identities amid practice environments that include widespread burnout and compassion fatigue. With a diverse set of authors engaged in clinical and educational practice in academic medicine, nursing, dentistry, physical therapy, mental health counseling, science education, psychology, social work, and inter-professional collaborative practice, we offer strategies for building resilience throughout the years of professional training and into professional practice. We do so through the experiences of authors involved in healthcare and the helping professions to illustrate how some are coping with the challenges of burnout and compassion fatigue through learning that can be transformative.This book explores the nature of professional identity formation by examining ways that professionals in training can thrive amid the challenges of today’s stressful practice environments. First-hand stories of resilience illustrate how learners, as well as educators in these professions, are addressing adversity, career decision-making, service to the underserved, and the self-care needed to provide excellent care for others. The prominence of transformative learning within adult learning theory is illustrated for its potential to revise the meaning that learners make of their experiences and open up new possibilities for renewed vitality in professional education and practice environments.The book has two primary audiences: professional learners in healthcare and helping professions education, and their educators who are often professional practitioners themselves. These educators have a significant role in influencing the next generation of professionals by serving as mentors, role models, and teachers. The importance of fostering learning that is transformative has never been more important than it is today for those who will work in these demanding professions. We invite readers to discover experiences and strategies for achieving individual wellbeing, as well as opportunities for building a culture within professional education and practice settings that will foster resilience.

This study examined professional development in practice. Interview data from 20 medical attending physicians suggested their professional practice progressed through four stages: (a) becoming familiar with the basic skills and operations of a profession, (b) building professional competence, (c) shifting practice from self-centered to client-centered, and (d) developing a continuous concern for the profession. Professional development is a life-long learning process. Attending physicians must continue learning after residency to acquire not only expert-level clinical competencies but also a set of personal qualities and attitudes that constitute the core of professionalism. Senior attending physicians stressed the importance of providing and receiving mentoring in professional development. A general model of professional development in practice was proposed.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in West

The development of professional practice is based on practice learning, yet there is no consensus about its definition. The currently evolving use of the term ‘practice learning’ provides us with an opportunity to consider the nature of learning for professional practice at initial entry through to post qualifying stages of development. A number of streams of thought are influencing the understanding of practice learning and we aim to consider some of these and how they inform those involved in supporting and guiding practice learners at different stages of their professional development. In presenting our conceptualisation of practice learning we argue against oversimplified dualities of classroom‐based academic learning concerned with theory and workplace‐based practice learning concerned with practice. Additionally we make explicit the career‐long nature of practice learning which is as embedded in continuing professional development as it is in the requirements for qualifying programmes. Having established what we mean by ‘practice learning’ we consider the impact of organisational learning theory on the management of practice learning. The consideration of the characteristics of organisations which learn leads to a brief examination of approaches to teaching and learning which promote knowledge creation in a way which is meaningful to practitioners. We will argue that the development of understandings of organisational learning and knowledge creation should become part of the knowledge base for those supporting and guiding practice learners, in addition to the traditional knowledge base of adult learning theory. Before exploring the nature of practice learning it would be helpful to consider briefly what we mean by professional practice for which practice learning is preparing people. Professional practice in social work is a complex set of activities which involve direct work with service users, and their families, as well as work with other professionals and agencies. A range of knowledge and skills are used with a firm value base which recognises diversity and oppression as key elements in UK society. Such professional practice is learned and developed in a range of ways over time through training, practice, understanding, analysis and reflection. However, the nature of just what practice learning is and where it occurs has become a focus of debate in the UK as a result of recent developments in initial professional education and training for social work.

Background: Practice development projects are often situated within a specific context and team, while scholarship awards focus more on the personal and professional development of individuals. Personal and professional development is an important component of practice development, however, and this paper reports on a survey of nurses and midwives who had been awarded personal scholarships and examines the scholars’ perceptions of the impact on practice development. Few studies of scholarships and their impact have been published previously. Aims: To present the outcomes of a research project that evaluated scholarships awarded to nurses and midwives, within the context of practice development To critique the role of personal scholarships as a means to support practice development and/or service improvement Methods: An online cross-sectional survey of nurses and midwives who had been awarded scholarships by a UK charity was conducted; 82 scholars responded, a 59% response rate. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and free text comments were analysed thematically. Results: Scholars overwhelmingly perceived a positive impact on their personal and professional development but most also believed there had been a positive impact on patient care, safety and experience, and on colleagues and their organisation; some referred to the latter as a ‘ripple’ effect of their scholarship. An analysis of these results indicated some synergy with practice development values. Conclusions: The award of scholarships to individuals appears to have a wider impact on scholars’ colleagues and their organisation with a resulting impact on practice development. This is important as few individuals are awarded personal scholarships. The explicit promotion of personal scholarships within a practice development framework could further develop the relationship between the two, affirming a wider impact of the awards. The sustainability of the practice changes scholars reported was outside this study’s remit but is an important issue worthy of further consideration. Implications for practice: •The award of personal scholarships is perceived positively by individuals in relation to their own personal and professional development •The award of individual scholarships can lead to practice development or service improvement with benefits for patient care and a wider effect on the practice of both teams and organisations •The long-term impact of scholarships on individual recipients and on practice development would be a useful area for future research •There needs to be further exploration and recognition of the relationship between personal professional development and practice development – in particular, an exploration of how scholars make changes in practice could be insightful

Community mental health nurses speak out: The critical relationship between emotional wellbeing and satisfying professional practice

In Indian Sanskrit and Budddhist Pali terms, Samagama means union, meeting, association, concert or simply coming together. In English, the derivative word is Sangam, meaning the confluence of a river with its tributaries. Like the many tributaries of a river, this chapter will bring together creative arts therapy practitioners from the diverse disciplines of dance/movement, art, drama and music – all pioneers in their own right, and document their experiences of contributing to the ebb and flow of arts therapy's evolution in India. This chapter will seek to unearth current developments in arts therapies practice, research and training that exist on the ground today and present them from the multiple perspectives of the different disciplines. The authors will also attempt to shed light on their own processes of acculturation and their efforts to decolonise and incorporate indigenous processes to make their work culturally relevant to India. The chapter brings up the ethical challenges and concerns practitioners are faced with in the absence of any formal education, professional training or regulatory bodies and the need for ethical standards and guidelines within the evolutionary domains of professional practice and training of the diverse disciplines in India. Through the length of these dialogues, we hope to discover our own true path, making visible the unknown in the arts therapies from an Eastern perspective. We hope to build trust and collectively support the creative arts therapies in gaining credibility and recognition, to fulfil the vision of actualising formal education in India. We hope our endeavour will lead to the professionalisation of these fields and motivate future generations of practitioners to enter the mental health ecosystem on a par with other mental health professionals in India and benchmark themselves with global standards.

Critical thinking competencies are not only seen as crucial for success in higher education, but also for future personal and workplace success. These competencies are commonly cited as a graduate attribute or goal of higher education, and resulting research has tended to focus on exploring and measuring the development of critical thinking competencies in students within higher education. However, few researchers have explored the curriculum and practice of academic staff within higher education in relation to their influence on developing critical thinking competencies in students, or how they theorise about the development of these competencies as part of their professional practice. Within the South African context, there is a perception of a decline in the development of critical thinking competencies within the secondary school system. This has informed policy imperatives to improve access and success in South African higher education through additional support for students, as well as through research into the first-year experience. Within a constructivist paradigm, and adopting a qualitative approach, this study takes the first year of higher education as its context in order to explore the curriculum, assessment, pedagogical and andragogical practices of academic staff designed to develop critical thinking competencies in first-year students. The aim is to explore how academic staff construct their theory and practice in order to contribute to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in South African Higher Education. Phenomenological case study research methods, which draw on data collection through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, enabled a better understanding of the lived experience of academic staff within private higher education. Academic staff, as research participants, were able to describe deliberate actions taken in their teaching practices to facilitate the development and assessment of critical thinking competencies. The findings revealed that academic staff – while having no coherent, well-articulated construction of critical thinking competencies – feel that such competencies are essential for academic and future life success. This not only affirmed previous research reviewed, but aligned to the inclusion of explicit and implicit references to critical thinking competencies found in the curriculum and assessment documents. Recommendations for professional development responded specifically to these findings.

&lt;p&gt;Despite the increase in massive open online courses (MOOCs), evidence about the pedagogy of learning in MOOCs remains limited. This paper reports on an investigation into the pedagogy in one MOOC - Oxford Brookes University’s ‘First Steps in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education’ MOOC (FSLT12).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;FSLT12 was an open and free professional development opportunity for people moving into HE teaching. It was a small course (200 participants registered from 24 countries) which was focused on introducing HE teaching skills, and, uniquely, to deliberately integrate open academic practice as a vital part of professional development for HE teachers. A qualitative, case-study approach was used in the research, based on surveys, interviews, and social media, to provide evidence about how people learned in this course and consider wider implications for teaching and learning in higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The evidence shows that participants who completed the course were able to learn autonomously and navigate the distributed platforms and environments. The most challenging issues were acceptance of open academic practice and difficulty in establishing an academic identity in an unpredictable virtual environment. An interesting and significant feature of the course was the support for learners from a number of MOOC ‘veterans’ who served as role models and guides for less experienced MOOC learners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The research shows that small task-oriented MOOCs can effectively support professional development of open academic practice.&lt;/p&gt;

This study investigated the professional development practices of teachers and their implications for literacy leadership and instructional management competence. It focused on training, peer collaboration, educational research, and mentorship, and examined their relationships with literacy leadership and instructional management competence. A descriptive-correlational research design was employed, involving 261 public elementary teachers from Vinzons District. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation. Results showed that training (M=3.56) and peer collaboration (M=3.49) were always practiced, mentorship programs (M=3.05) were frequently practiced, while educational research (M=2.12) was rarely practiced. Professional development practices had strong positive implications for literacy leadership (M=3.58–3.64) and instructional management competence (M=3.52–3.63). Significant correlations were found between professional development practices and both literacy leadership (r=.184–.504, p&lt;.01) and instructional management competence (r=.192–.478, p&lt;.01), with training and mentorship showing the strongest associations. The study concludes that while teachers are consistent in training and collaboration, engagement in research remains limited. Professional development contributes significantly to both literacy leadership and instructional management competence, but areas such as inclusivity, curriculum planning, and external linkages need further support. To address these gaps, the study recommends structured Continuous Professional Development (CPD), stronger mentoring, institutionalized peer learning communities, and the SPARK (Sustaining Professional Advancement and Research Knowledge of Literacy Leaders) Program to enhance teachers’ research capability.

The New Academics Transitioning into Higher Education Project, known as NATHEP, is part of a national collaborative project in Higher Education (HE), focused on the professional development of academic staff developers who are involved in the induction programmes of new academics transitioning into HE. Using a cascading model of staff development, NATHEP explored structural and cultural opportunities and constraints that inhibited or promoted the emergence of critical induction programmes to respond to new academics’ needs and to the needs of students. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape (UCDP, 2018), new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. With systemic conditions not being conducive to critical agency and social justice, current induction practices for new academics are inadequate to the task of transformation in higher education (Behari-Leak, 2015), making new academics especially vulnerable (Behari-Leak, 2017). NATHEP focused on developing a national orientation to induction practices and principles across the sector. Twenty academic staff developers from 10 universities were supported to initiate and convene well-theorised and conceptualised induction programmes in their institutional contexts, to address historical and systemic challenges and to contribute to the transformation of higher education. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, this book offers a theorised account of how academic staff developers, in devising models of induction practice for new academics at their universities, engaged with enabling and constraining conditions at institutional, faculty, departmental and university classroom levels. Through an analysis of institutional case studies, this project explores a range of agential choices exercised by staff developers to conceptualise and contextualise induction programmes, relative to how they, as well as their new academics, mediate contested spaces. A nuanced social and critical account of the material, ideational and agential conditions in HE shows that the courses of action taken by new academics are driven through their concerns, commitments and projects in higher education. A further aim of this project was to see if academic staff developers would be driven by corresponding but different concerns and commitments. Drawing on Margaret Archer’s social realism and Bhaskar’s critical realism, the Seven Scalar Being (2010) was used as a heuristic for both the methodological and pedagogical approach taken. Through this ontological laminar, the project explored and analysed what critical professional development looks like (Kohli et al, 2015) across seven levels of reality. In addition to working from the premise that the positive exercise of agency is a marked feature of new participants in HE despite contextual challenges (Leibowitz, et.al., 2016), NATHEP also explored, if at a conceptual level, the structural and cultural contexts might act as a trigger or dampener for academic staff developers’ agency. Importantly, we needed to know the extent to which contexts would have immediate implications for ways in which professional and academic development programmes are conceptualised and implemented. It was hoped that with an alternative theorisation and creation of conducive conditions for the uptake of critical agency, in both disciplinary and departmental programmes, staff developers would create emergent induction programmes for new academics, that are contextualised, sensitised, responsive and informed. To this end, the creation of a framework to infuse criticality into professional development practices was a highlight of NATHEP’s scholarly work. The CRiTiCAL framework is offered here as the project’s contribution to knowledge generation. Via this heuristic, which was used to embed relevant and contextual practices and values into otherwise generic induction, NATHEP was able to reorientate staff developers and their institutions to their ethical obligation to introduce newcomers to the sector and their institutions in ways that could really help them to “hit the ground running”. Through a collaborative, consultative and inclusive methodology, and based on a cascading model (discussed later) of staff development, NATHEP prepared staff development practitioners to exercise their agency by engaging with knowledge in relevant and generative ways and to create inclusive and participatory teaching and learning experiences that are responsive to institutional, regional and national challenges.

Securing the oral tradition: Reflective positioning and professional conversations in midwifery education

One Nurse, One Life, Many Legacies: A Tribute: Nancy Kostel-Donlon, July 10, 1958-September 17, 2010

This study investigated sex of faculty role model and students' professional development. Subjects were 80 female and 77 male graduate students enrolled in the same academic department who responded anonymously to a questionnaire assessing self-evaluations of competency, stress, and satisfaction in regard to the student and intended professional roles. Female graduate students who identified female professors as role models viewed themselves as more career oriented, confident, and instrumental than did female students who identified male role models. However, female students with female role models did not differ in these self-descriptions from male students identifying male faculty as role models. Choice of role model did not similarly relate to self-reports of stress in the student role or of departmental satisfaction, but female students with female role models reported higher satisfaction with their student role than did male or female students with a male role model. Alternate explanations for the findings are discussed and questions for future research in this area are raised.