Evelyn Chilemba
University of Malawi, Malawi
Title: Educator perceptions of the Bsn programme at the university of Malawi
Biography
Biography: Evelyn Chilemba
Abstract
Learning for optimal practice demands good teaching and is a dynamic curriculum requirement pertinent to the needs of the society. The stakeholders’ growing concerns and observations on the BSN programme at Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi formed foundational bases for exploring the educators’ perceptions on this programme. Educational level makes a difference on how graduate nurses’ practice, the study explored on how the nurse educators’ had perceived the BSN graduate education towards learning for practice. A two–phased, cross sectional, sequential explanatory mixed research design was deployed to investigate the educators’ perceptions on their graduate nurses’ educational processes. An analysis of quantitative data from phase one informed the construction of an interview guide that formed basis for the epistemological assumptions of the educators’ perceptions. Purposive intensity sampling strategy was utilized while observing the principle of saturation was deployed to recruit ten participants who were invited to participant during phase one. Content analysis approach, systematic classification process coding, themes and patterns identification was used to interpret text data. Trustworthiness ensured through strategies of prolonged observation, peer debriefing and member checking. Safety and rights of participants were observed and respected. The results had three sub-themes that emerged from the main theme of “educators’ perceptions”, these are lectures preferred, created student dependency and learner characteristics guide teaching. The educators were skeptical about learners’ reliance on lecture notes, saying that their practice resulted in poor learning empowerment and that the educators had preferred teaching methods that were not based on curriculum benchmarks.