Teaching the ideas of others: Is there a problem?

Abstract

University nurse educators do not always possess subject expertize in the non-nursing disciplines from which the ideas they use in teaching are derived. This is potentially problematic. Subject expertize can be variously defined. Nonetheless, expertize is associated with education, and education is often assessed by processes culminating in accreditation. Nurse educators, however, do not hold first degrees in every subject they take ideas from (e.g. biology, ethics, pharmacology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc.), and in consequence ideas are brought to the attention of students studying for first and higher degrees by educators who lack accreditation at the level at which the ideas they use in teaching are taken. Disjunctures between accredited learning and teaching generate epistemological and other conundrums. Nevertheless, bluntly, absent subject expertize, educators risk talking nonsense when poorly understood ideas are presented to students.