Teaching and Research Philosophy

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Table of Contents

Teaching Philosophy
Research Philosophy
The Significance of Certification in a Family Nurse Practitioner
References

Teaching Philosophy

The role of knowledge and learning in the 21st century is paramount. A century ago influence of a teacher rarely extended beyond the borders of a school or a college. The knowledge received in the first two decades of a person’s life was usually enough to support them for the remainder of their lives. The 21st century is different. Knowledge becomes outdated and obsolete at an alarming rate, which forces individuals to engage in a constant process of learning. The role of a teacher, thus, becomes more important than ever.

Every teacher has a specific teaching philosophy that motivates them and determines the methods and goals that they use in order to convey their message to the students. The goals behind my teaching methods would revolve around the following principles:

Help the student develop as a person by nurturing their positive sides and help mitigate any negative qualities they might have.
Provide the student with a set of useful and marketable skills that would enable further learning and a potential for finding employment or starting a private enterprise.
Develop a capacity for self-education, thus enabling the student to continue to learn outside of the classroom, in order to ensure that their skills and knowledge maintain their competitive edge.

There are numerous methods and strategies for teaching. These strategies are (Gill, 2017):

Expert model – in this model, the teacher acts as a coach, sharing experience, providing information, and giving feedback to students in order to promote higher learning.
Formal authority model – this model provides knowledge and information in the form of a lecture, with less personalized student interaction.
Personal model – an adaptive format which incorporates traits from all teaching styles and uses them appropriately to the situation.
Facilitator model – this model suggests organizing participatory learning activities, providing instructional information and feedback to students with a purpose of developing teamwork and developing critical thinking.
Delegator model – suggests delegating the majority of the tasks to students and promotes self-education as well as engagement between groups and individuals in order to achieve a particular goal.

My personal style of teaching is close to the Personal model, as I prefer adapting to the needs of every student in order to teach more effectively. Using one style or one model in a classroom would diminish inclusiveness, as not all the students respond equally to one type of teaching. However, I recognize that tutoring every student individually would be an impossible task due to resource and time constraints, which means I will shift between strategies in order to increase the efficiency of a teaching process. For example, Lecture model would fit well with a large group of adult students but would not be as effective when educating children. Delegator model is good for promoting self-reliance and teamwork, but it is a slow method which cannot be considered optimal under the constraints of a standard curriculum.

I recognize and understand the importance of the use of advanced teaching tools and technology in modern practice. Aside from the classic tools such as books, chalk, and blackboard, I will use media technology, computers, and the Internet in order to help visualize the information and promote technological awareness and information-gathering skills among students (“Use of technology,” n.d.).

My teaching method acknowledges that different students respond differently to various teaching tools and strategies. While some students feel comfortable receiving information in a lecture format, others prefer self-sustained research or better visualization of the subject. In order to address their needs, my combined method will provide variety in order to include every student in the learning process.

Research Philosophy

Research is an important part of any industrial development, but it is particularly important for teaching. The world around us is changing with every passing day, and educational facilities must be able to respond to these changes not only in a reactive but in a proactive way as well. For the past several centuries, the format of classical education remained relatively unchanged, as schools, colleges, universities, and teachers that inhabited them supported only dogmatic, impersonal ways of education. The system that dominated the education sphere for a long time is now called traditional education (“History of education,” n.d.). Only in the past few decades, educational research received the academic attention it deserves. As such, every teacher and educator must also become a researcher in order to promote improvement and evolution of traditional teaching methods (“Research philosophy,” 2017).

My academic research will focus on adapting practical education and the study of potential marketing skills into the existing curriculum. I believe that it is very important to prepare the students for the real world that exists outside of the classroom. While the existing educational program provides knowledge on various educational subjects from biology to classic literature, it woefully lacks in areas such as social and financial awareness, the basics of labor marketing, citizenship, and self-education. Naturally, the scope of my research will aim at the students, as its purpose is to provide them with the necessary skills of functioning in a modern society. At the same time, it will affect the teachers and the curriculum, as it would require some changes in order to incorporate these new fields of knowledge.

In the future, I am planning to adhere to this philosophy in my research and develop a consistent and practical program that could be applied on a local level, within the parameters of one school. Should it succeed, there is a potential of it growing into a state-wide initiative.

The Significance of Certification in a Family Nurse Practitioner

In the majority of the states, acquiring national certification is the first step for a Family Nursing Practitioner to be allowed to be allowed to practice medicine. As a rule, acquiring certification expands a nurse’s scope of practice by enabling them to apply for work in various public and private healthcare organizations. The purpose of certification is to provide a valid and reliable way of recognizing a nurse’s education, skills, and professional knowledge, in order to ensure the quality of care and professional readiness of the practitioner (“Vision,” n.d.). Practicing without national certification is allowed only in three states: California, Kansas, and New York (Fitzgerald, 2015). However, it is possible for these states to adopt national certification requirements in the future.

The difference between a Family Nurse Practitioner and an Adult-Gerontological Nurse Practitioner certification processes lies in the required certifications. Both FNP and A-GNP require national and state certifications, as well as credentials from their respective nursing schools. However, while FNP is trained to provide nursing expertise to patients on all stages of their development, A-GNP focuses on adult and senior populations, which are susceptible to a greater number of acute and chronic diseases as they become older (“Role & Scope,” n.d.). In order to apply for the FNP exam, the candidate must provide a graduation diploma for any state-approved nursing program, an NCLEX examination pass card, a self-report on disabilities, addictions, or convictions (“Registered nurse certification,” 2017), and certifications fees, which are 240$ for AANP members and 315$ for non-members (“AANPCP Certification”, 2017).