K. Hyrkas et al., Finnish nurse teachers' perceptions of their 'scientific thinking' and itsdevelopment during Master's-level teacher education at university, SC J CAR SC, 13(2), 1999, pp. 129-136
There are very few studies on nurse teachers' education, since the main int
erest has been on the demanding nature of a teacher's work. In Finland, the
educational system of nursing care is developing rapidly and nurse teacher
s' education is changing as well. However, there is no research into academ
ic nurse teacher education, even though this can be seen as important with
regard to the educational system as well as to the nursing discipline. In t
his study, the objective was to describe 45 nurse teachers' perceptions of
the development of their scientific thinking during Master's-level studies
at the university. Open-ended questions were used in collecting the materia
l with a questionnaire. The results of this phenomenographic research show
that the need to increase one's scientific knowledge, as well as external d
emands, were the reasons for applying for admission to the university. Conc
eptions of the development of scientific thinking differed with regard to t
he processing of knowledge and to changes or developments in scientific thi
nking. The teachers' conceptions of the use of scientific nursing knowledge
Varied as well. The results challenge Future teacher education and how it
is arranged and developed. Further research, utilising different research m
ethods, is needed into the development of scientific thinking.