Faculty of Medicine, Research Unit of Nursing Science and Health Management, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Health Soc Care Community. 2022 Jan;30(1):e75-e85. doi: 10.1111/hsc.13414. Epub 2021 May 19.
The social and health care educator's role in educating future professionals need to be stronger emphasised and deserves international recognition. The purpose of this study was to develop and test an empirical model of social and health care educators' competence in higher and professional education. The presented research employed a cross-sectional study design. Data were collected using HeSoEduCo-instrument from 28 educational institutions in Finland. The model was empirically tested with confirmatory factor analysis through Structural Equation Modelling that applied the Full Imputation Maximum Likelihood estimator. A total of 422 social and health care educators participated in the study. The empirical model of social and health care educators including eight competence areas: leadership and management, collaboration and societal, evidence-based practice, subject and curriculum, mentoring students in professional competence development, student-centred pedagogy, digital collaborative learning, and cultural and linguistic diversity. All of the connections between concepts of the empirical model were found to be statistically significant. There were strong connections between most of the identified competence concepts; however, two weak connections were found, namely, the link between competence in evidence-based practice and competence in subject and curriculum, along with the link between competence in digital collaborative learning and competence in student-centred pedagogy. The presented empirical model can help stakeholders identify which areas of social and health care educators' curricula should be further developed. The model is also relevant for improving continuous education, allowing educators to assess their competence levels and evaluating educators' performance at the organisational level.
社会和医疗保健教育工作者在教育未来专业人员方面的作用需要得到更加强调，并应得到国际认可。本研究旨在开发和测试高等和专业教育中社会和医疗保健教育工作者能力的实证模型。本研究采用了横断面研究设计。使用 HeSoEduCo 工具从芬兰的 28 个教育机构收集数据。通过结构方程模型应用完全插入最大似然估计对实证模型进行了验证性因素分析。共有 422 名社会和医疗保健教育工作者参与了这项研究。社会和医疗保健教育工作者的实证模型包括八个能力领域：领导力和管理、协作和社会、循证实践、学科和课程、指导学生专业能力发展、以学生为中心的教学法、数字协作学习以及文化和语言多样性。实证模型中所有概念之间的联系都被发现具有统计学意义。大多数确定的能力概念之间存在很强的联系；然而，发现了两个较弱的联系，即循证实践能力与学科和课程能力之间的联系，以及数字协作学习能力与以学生为中心的教学法能力之间的联系。所提出的实证模型可以帮助利益相关者确定社会和医疗保健教育工作者课程的哪些领域需要进一步发展。该模型还与改进继续教育相关，使教育工作者能够评估自己的能力水平，并在组织层面评估教育工作者的绩效。
