B.A. Nursing Education

The Bachelor of Arts Programme in Nursing Education  aims to provide professionally trained nursing and care personnel with specialised academic and pedagogical qualifications and thus contribute to filling the need for instructors at educational facilities for nursing and care.

The main emphasis of the study programme is on the pedagogical modules and the corresponding practical units for deeper learning. In accordance with the professional qualification framework for nursing education of the German Society of Nursing Science (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pflegewissenschaft, DGP), graduates will gain pedagogical and didactic competence as nurse educators in various fields of professional activity and reflection. At the micro level, this refers to the theory-driven preparation, execution, and debriefing of teaching and learning situations, the design of digital teaching and learning opportunities, and the planning and implementation of instructional units in the media, testing and evaluating, educational counselling, as well as the knowledge of the essential legal conditions on the teaching profession. The meso level incorporates curriculum development, the design and cooperation of the learning space, organisational structures, the management processes of the social and educational facilities, and school and higher education development. The macro level addresses the educational and vocational training system as well as educational and vocational policies, educational discourses and research, and the development of nursing, care, and nurse training as professions. Individual lessons and instructional elements and methods can be tested didactically in the safe space provided by courses in the third space in cooperation with training sites for nursing and caregiving.

The study programme also imparts the basic knowledge of nursing science that is indispensable for teaching:

• Nursing theories
• Ethical questions in the context of nursing and care
• Basics of health sciences and social sciences for nursing
• Population specific, preventive, rehabilitative, counselling, instructional, educational, and directive interventions and concepts for nursing and care
• diagnostic and case-based clinical procedures as well as assessment instruments
• quality discourses, evidence-based nursing, and innovative approaches to care

The deeper understanding of these nursing fundamentals makes it possible to design the professional nursing instruction according to academic criteria and with the proper degree of complexity.

Continual ties to praxis, which are established particularly in the fifth semester through the practical project in the form of pedagogical research of concept development (planning and evaluation of teaching and learning processes), mean that the content of the study programme will have a high degree of applicability and connection to both the current challenges in the professional training of nursing personnel and to the teaching activity in the training facilities of the healthcare system.

Structure of the study programme

The course of studies encompasses a total of 21 modules, which are divided into seven focus areas:

1. Academic and methodological basics
2. Disciplines related to nursing education
3. Fundamentals of nursing science
4. Evidence-based professional nursing
5. Nursing in social-service organisations
6. Education and counselling in nursing
7. Practical project and Bachelor thesis

The studies are organised so that each module and its corresponding final examination can be completed within two semesters. The number of assessments is spread as evenly as possible over the course of studies. In order to make it possible for students to retain some form of limited employment, the in-person classes are all combined into two or three days a week.