The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a faculty development program on the level of faculty cognitive questions, student responses and student questions in post clinical nursing conferences.

A pre and post test design was used. The sample consisted of sixteen clinical faculty and a group of their clinical nursing students. Post clinical conferences were audiorecorded and the audiorecordings analyzed using the Manson and Clegg classification system to obtain pre and post test measures for the percentage of higher level cognitive questions.

The results indicated that clinical faculty who had completed the faculty development program asked a significantly greater percentage of higher level questions than faculty who had not completed the program (p $<$.01). These higher level faculty questions were also highly positively correlated with students' higher level first cognitive responses (R $>$ 0.9 and p $<$ 0.001 in all cases but one). The relationship between higher level faculty questions and student questions was also tested but did not reach statistical significance. The effects of the faculty development program were also shown to be maintained over a three week period. Supplemental analyses were made confirming the observation that students asked a greater percentage of higher level cognitive questions than did their faculty. An additional finding was the observation of cognitive-affective discord when clinical faculty pursued a cognitive line of questioning when students had affective concerns.

This study has implications for nursing and nursing education which include the use of faculty development programs in graduate nursing education courses as an effective method for increasing faculty level of questioning. In addition, this study raises interesting questions about the traditional teaching/learning models of Tyler and Bellack and associates. The observation that students asked a greater percentage of higher level questions than their clinical faculty and the discord observation suggest a restructuring of the post clinical conference with the focus on the student, rather than the teacher, as the initiator of the questioning process. This structure sets the pattern for the life long process of nurses reflecting upon the quality of their nursing care.