NURS 618 Week 2 Teaching Philosophy Paper Example

Teaching Philosophy Paper: Learners Build Judgment From Guided Experience, a Constructivist Philosophy for Nurse Education

Introduction

Early in my career as a preceptor, I spent twenty minutes explaining to a new graduate why a patient with heart failure should not receive a large fluid bolus. The graduate nodded and agreed. An hour later, when the patient's blood pressure dropped, the graduate reached for a bolus anyway. The next week, I tried something different. I asked the graduate to look at the patient's lung sounds, weight trend and oxygen requirement and tell me what they suggested about fluid status before deciding anything. The graduate worked it out, and the lesson stuck. That experience sums up my teaching philosophy: nurses build clinical judgment by working through real or realistic situations with guidance, not by receiving explanations. This paper sets out that philosophy, grounds it in constructivist learning theory, and explains what it means for how I will teach.

Theoretical Framework: Constructivism

Billings and Halstead (2016) describe constructivism as a view of learning in which learners actively build knowledge, linking each new experience with what they have previously understood, rather than passively receiving it. In constructivist teaching, the educator designs experiences, asks questions that provoke thinking, and helps learners reflect on what they have done, so that understanding is built by the learner rather than delivered by the teacher. I chose this framework because it explains my preceptor experience: the explanation transmitted information, but the guided assessment allowed the graduate to build understanding that could be used under pressure. Constructivism also fits the outcome that matters most in nursing education, clinical judgment, which cannot be memorized and must be developed through repeated practice in reasoning.

Belief About the Learner

I believe learners come to nursing with knowledge, experience and values that shape how they understand new content, and that they learn most when they are actively making sense of situations. A constructivist view treats a learner's existing understanding, including misconceptions, as the starting point for teaching. In practice, this means I will begin units by asking what learners already know or believe, often with a short case, so that I can build on accurate ideas and challenge mistaken ones. Recent work on clinical reasoning supports this active role. Neethling and Roets (2025) reviewed 18 articles on teaching strategies for clinical reasoning in nursing students and identified three broad approaches, simulation, classroom activities and e-learning, all of which enhanced clinical reasoning and all of which required learners to work through problems rather than listen to explanations.

Belief About the Teacher

I believe the teacher's role is to design experiences, ask questions and give feedback that help learners build understanding, while remaining responsible for accuracy and safety. Halstead (2007) describes nurse educator competencies that include facilitating learning and facilitating learner development, both of which place the educator in a guiding rather than lecturing role. That does not mean I will never explain; constructivism allows for explanation when learners need information they cannot discover. It means explanation serves the learner's thinking rather than replacing it.

This belief requires me to grow as a teacher, not only as a clinician. Speck et al. (2025) reviewed 36 peer-reviewed articles along with organizational and gray literature on expert clinicians moving into faculty roles and identified five categories that support the transition, including introduction to academia, pedagogical approaches, and teaching philosophy and goals. Their inclusion of teaching philosophy as a category reassures me that writing this paper is part of becoming an educator, not an academic formality. A clinician becomes a teacher not by knowing more but by learning to ask the question that lets someone else know it too.

Belief About the Learning Environment

I believe learning environments should require learners to be active in class, not only in clinical settings, and should connect learning to the communities nurses serve. In the classroom, constructivism points me toward formats such as the flipped classroom, in which learners prepare beforehand and class time is spent applying knowledge to cases. Barranquero-Herbosa et al. (2022) synthesized 15 systematic and integrative reviews covering 274 studies and 34,608 nursing students and found that, compared with traditional teaching, flipped classrooms produced better results in performance, competencies and satisfaction, while noting heterogeneity and medium to low methodological quality among the studies. I will use a flipped format for units where application is the goal, with short preparation materials and in-class case work.

Learning should also extend beyond the classroom. Service learning, in which students meet community needs while reflecting on what they learn, is a constructivist strategy because learners construct understanding from real experience. In a survey of 113 nursing students across prelicensure, advanced practice and doctoral programs, Haras et al. (2026) found that prior service-learning experience and years of nursing experience predicted greater intent to take part in service learning, and they recommended building it intentionally into curricula. I intend to include a service-learning component in any course I teach where it fits the outcomes.

Belief About Diverse Learners

I believe that a constructivist classroom must take seriously the different experiences learners bring, because those experiences are the material from which they build understanding. Nursing cohorts now include second-career adults, students for whom English is not a first language, first-generation college students and experienced licensed practical nurses returning for a degree. A single explanation delivered the same way to all of them will reach some and miss others. Billings and Halstead (2016) emphasize that effective educators assess learners' backgrounds and adapt strategies to them rather than expecting learners to adapt to one teaching style. In practice, I will use cases that draw on varied patient and community settings, offer preparation materials in more than one format, and invite learners to connect new content to their own work and life experience during class discussion. A licensed practical nurse's experience with wound care, for example, can become the starting point for a discussion of wound healing that benefits everyone in the room. This belief also shapes how I respond to struggle. When a learner falls behind, my first question will be what that learner already knows and how they are making sense of the material, not simply how many times they have read it.

Belief About Evaluation

I believe evaluation should measure whether learners can use what they have learned in situations like those they will face in practice, and should give learners feedback they can act on. Constructivism implies that evaluation is part of learning, not only a judgment at the end. In practice, I will favor case-based questions, simulation with debriefing and reflective writing over recall-only tests, and I will build formative feedback into every unit before summative evaluation. I will also share criteria with learners in advance so that they can judge their own progress.

Faith and My Philosophy

My Christian faith shapes this philosophy in two ways. First, I believe each learner bears the image of God and is worthy of respect, including when they struggle, which means I owe every learner patience, honesty and a real chance to grow. Second, Jesus often taught by asking questions and telling stories that required listeners to think, as when he asked a lawyer which of three passersby proved to be a neighbor to the wounded man (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 10:36). That method, inviting learners to reach the answer themselves, is close to what constructivism describes, and it reminds me that teaching by guided discovery has a long history.

Testing and Revising the Philosophy

A philosophy is useful only if it is tested. Taff et al. (2026) conducted a scoping review of teaching philosophy statements in health professions education and found 14 relevant articles, in which statements were most often described as artifacts for teaching portfolios, reflective guides or parts of promotion packets, with little research on their effect on teaching or learners. That finding encourages me to treat this philosophy as a working document rather than a finished statement. During my practicum, I will compare each lesson I teach with the beliefs above and note where my practice matched or contradicted them, then revise the philosophy at the end of the course.

Conclusion

My teaching philosophy rests on the belief that nurses build judgment through guided experience. Constructivist learning theory explains that belief and shapes my views of the learner as an active builder of understanding, the teacher as a designer of experiences and a questioner, the environment as active and connected to the community, and evaluation as part of learning. Recent research on clinical reasoning, the transition to faculty roles, flipped classrooms and service learning supports these choices, and my faith grounds them in respect for each learner. I will test this philosophy in practice and revise it as I learn.

References

Barranquero-Herbosa, M., Abajas-Bustillo, R., & Ortego-Maté, C. (2022). Effectiveness of flipped classroom in nursing education: A systematic review of systematic and integrative reviews. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 135, Article 104327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2022.104327

Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2016). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (5th ed.). Elsevier.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Halstead, J. A. (Ed.). (2007). Nurse educator competencies: Creating an evidence-based practice for nurse educators. National League for Nursing.

Haras, M. S., Ogg-Gress, J., & Wilkinson, M. (2026). From awareness to intent: Nursing students' service-learning attitudes across academic levels. The Journal of Nursing Education, 65(8), 487-490. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20260116-01

Neethling, A., & Roets, L. (2025). Strategies to develop clinical reasoning in nursing students: A structured review. Health SA Gesondheid, 30, Article 2889. https://doi.org/10.4102/hsag.v30i0.2889

Speck, P. M., Milligan, G. W., Hammond, S. A., Hallman, M. G., & Steadman, L. A. (2025). An integrative literature review for the clinical expert transitioning to a nurse faculty role. Journal of Professional Nursing, 59, 78-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2025.04.003

Taff, S. D., Mitchell, A., Lipsey, K. L., & Moquin, R. (2026). The prevalence and use of teaching philosophy statements in health professions education: A scoping review. The Clinical Teacher, 23(2), Article e70393. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.70393