16.2 Scholar Qualities & Designing Scholarly Activities (Boyer)

Designing Scholarship as an Academic Nurse Educator

Once a culture of inquiry exists (Section 16.1), Domain 7 asks whether faculty can design and conduct scholarly activities with integrity. Ernest L. Boyer’s influential expansion of scholarship remains high-yield for the CNE: discovery is necessary but not sufficient as the only recognized form. Academic nurse educators—especially in teaching-intensive programs—must map their work to multiple legitimate forms of scholarship while still meeting scholarly standards (clear problem, systematic approach, results that can be peer-reviewed or publicly critiqued, and ethical conduct).

Quick Answer: Use Boyer’s domains (discovery, integration, application, teaching/SoTL) to name and design work; cultivate scholar qualities; match projects to mission and resources; start with a real question, a feasible design, collaborators as needed, and IRB awareness.

Boyer’s Model: Four Scholarships (and SoTL)

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

SoTL grows from Boyer’s teaching scholarship. It is more than “I tried a new activity and liked it.” Scholarly teaching becomes SoTL when faculty:

1. Pose a question about student learning
2. Ground the work in literature
3. Systematically gather and analyze evidence (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed)
4. Invite peer review / public dissemination
5. Reflect and iterate

CNE trap: Calling any teaching change “research” without systematic inquiry—or, conversely, refusing to call rigorous SoTL “scholarship” because it is not bench science.

Qualities of a Scholar

Domain 7 includes who the scholar is, not only what projects they list. Qualities frequently emphasized in nurse educator scholarship discourse include:

On exam stems, the better option usually pairs character + method (e.g., persevering through revision after peer review) rather than flashy claims without integrity.

Designing Scholarly Activities for Institutional Mission

Scholarship must be mission-appropriate and resource-realistic while remaining scholarly.

Domain 8 (workload/mission) intersects here: good Domain 7 design negotiates fit rather than pretending every campus is identical.

Research Basics for Educators (High-Yield Overview)

CNE does not require biostatistics expertise of a full-time methodologist, but educators should know the pipeline:

Practice/teaching problem or knowledge gap
        ↓
Focused question (often PICOT-like or educational research question)
        ↓
Literature review & conceptual framing
        ↓
Design & methods (qual, quant, mixed; QI vs research distinction)
        ↓
Ethics / IRB determination & approvals as required
        ↓
Data collection & analysis
        ↓
Interpretation with limitations
        ↓
Dissemination & application (Section 16.3)

Question and design

• Descriptive — What is happening? (e.g., student perceptions of belonging)
• Relational — Are variables associated? (e.g., simulation hours and clinical judgment scores)
• Causal / comparative — Does intervention X improve outcome Y compared with alternative?
• Qualitative — How do learners experience X? What meanings emerge?
• QI / PDSA — Can we improve a local process? (may or may not generalize; still can be scholarly when systematic and shared)

Match design to question. A randomized design is not automatically “more scholarly” if the question is exploratory or the sample is tiny and contaminated.

Collaborative scholarship

Collaboration is often a strength, not a weakness:

• Content expert + education researcher + statistician
• Cross-campus multi-site teaching studies
• Clinical partner + faculty for application scholarship
• Interprofessional teams for IPE-related inquiry

Agree early on roles, authorship, data ownership, and timelines (integrity).

IRB and human-subjects awareness

Academic nurse educators must know that learner data are not automatically free to publish.

CNE trap: “It’s just my class—no one needs IRB.” Better answer: consult institutional process early; many SoTL projects are exempt or expedited, but determination is not the investigator’s alone.

Also maintain awareness of FERPA when educational records are involved (Domain 6 legal currency overlap): de-identification, permissions, and institutional rules matter.

Putting It Together: A Mission-Fit SoTL Mini-Example

Common CNE Traps

Bottom Line for Scholar Qualities & Boyer-Aligned Design

Use Boyer’s expanded model to legitimize and design discovery, integration, application, and teaching/SoTL work. Cultivate integrity, courage, perseverance, vitality, and creativity. Build feasible projects with clear questions, appropriate methods, collaboration, and IRB awareness. On CNE items, reject both research elitism (only funded discovery) and casual anti-methods culture (any anecdote counts as scholarship).