Moving beyond either/or toward improved patient outcomes.(President's Message)

I just spent an afternoon with graduates of a new and innovative Master of Science in Nursing Program with a specialization in nursing education. These are the moments, as NLN president, when I realize what a gift this position has been. I wish each one of you could have been with me to soak up the graduates' enthusiasm for designing new approaches to teaching nursing in diverse environments and for pursuing nursing education research. For those of us who believe in the integrity of the advanced practice role of the nurse educator, believe me, it was a high!

For the past decade, the NLN has asserted that the nurse educator role requires specialized preparation and that leaders in nursing education must be closely involved in the conduct of pedagogical research and contribute to the ongoing development of the science of nursing education. Some have misunderstood this position, viewing such pursuit as a devaluation of clinical competency on an advanced practice level. Some have even stated that advocating for building the science of nursing education excludes any other type of nursing research.

Such misinterpretation has resulted in debate about the relationship between nursing education research and clinical nursing research. A historical perspective is needed.

The 2002 NLN position statement, The Preparation of Nurse Educators (www.nln.org/aboutnln/PositionStatements/index.htm), clearly indicates that increased opportunities for nurses to pursue preparation as educators do not diminish the need for nurse educators to be competent clinicians. When this position statement was developed, the NLN fully recognized that nursing is a practice profession; that nursing research has relevance, significance, value, and meaning to the practice situation; and that efforts to promote the science of nursing practice must continue into the future. The position statement calls for a balance between research directed toward practice issues and those research efforts directed toward scholarship in teaching and learning.

One purpose in developing the position statement in 2002 was to highlight nursing education research as distinct from nursing practice research. The motivation came from a desire to make pedagogical research more acceptable within the academy and to ensure that nursing education research was viewed as a legitimate form of scholarship. By placing the focus of research on questions about student learning, new pedagogies, graduate competencies, program outcomes, innovative clinical ...