Team Teaching

Abstract

There is growing recognition of the importance of having well-qualified faculty members to carry out clinical teaching and to relate clinical and classroom learning. This recognition has fostered the practice of team teaching, a system which makes it easier to meet the need for a faculty large enough to handle the clinical instruction of small groups of students. In previous years it was not unusual for one teacher to be responsible for classroom instruction of forty or fifty students; clinical instruction was carried out largely by nursing service personnel. The broadening of content in some nursing courses (such as the development of a course in the care of mothers and children, rather than separate courses in obstetric and pediatric nursing) has also fostered team teaching, because of the necessity for participation by faculty with different areas of clinical preparation. The effort to integrate various concepts throughout the curriculum, such as those dealing with nurse-patient relationships, has furthered the practice of having a group of faculty with different areas of specialization share in clinical and classroom teaching.