| Course | RES 6541 Finalizing the Dissertation Proposal |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | Final dissertation proposal |
| Length | 1,210 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | Ed.D. and DBA doctoral core |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for RES 6541 Module 5
The First Semester on the Unit: A Final Dissertation Proposal for a Qualitative Descriptive Study of Part-Time Clinical Nursing Instructors
Student Name
American College of Education
RES6541: Finalizing the Dissertation Proposal
Module 5 Assignment
Instructor Name
November 9, 2026
Abstract
Baccalaureate nursing programs depend on part-time instructors to supervise students on hospital units, yet these nurses often begin teaching with brief orientation and little contact with the school. The study will gather and describe, in their own terms, the first-term accounts of these instructors in Kentucky, including what eased the work and what got in the way. Twelve to fifteen instructors from six programs will take part in semi-structured video interviews. Transcripts will be analyzed inductively using reflexive thematic analysis, with credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability addressed through member checking, peer debriefing, thick description, an audit trail and a reflexive journal. Findings are intended to inform orientation and support for new clinical faculty.
Chapter 1 in Brief
Problem. Nurses are often hired to teach students on hospital units because they are strong clinicians, then given little preparation for teaching; what that first term is like for them, and what eases or complicates it, has not been documented in Kentucky's bachelor's programs. Purpose. To produce a qualitative description of new part-time clinical teachers' first term, in their own words, with attention to what supported and what impeded them. Questions. One broad question invites participants to tell the story of that first term; two narrower ones draw out sources of help and sources of difficulty. Framework. The nurse educator transition model (Schoening, 2013), whose phases move from early expectations, through a disoriented stretch and a search for information, toward a new identity, sensitizes the interview guide and the discussion without directing the coding.
Chapter 2 in Brief
Three themes organize the literature. The first concerns the move from expert clinician to novice educator. Nurses entering academic roles have described feeling unprepared and relying on informal help (Anderson, 2009), and phenomenological work has captured the experience of becoming a novice again after years of clinical expertise (Weidman, 2013). The second theme concerns part-time clinical faculty specifically. An integrated review of their needs pointed to orientation, ongoing support and connection with the school as recurring concerns (McPherson, 2019), and programs have been urged to plan the orientation, evaluation and integration of part-time faculty deliberately rather than leave it to chance (Carlson, 2015). The third theme concerns the conditions of clinical teaching on hospital units, where instructors supervise several students amid unit routines they do not control. Most transition research has studied full-time faculty, and nurses teaching part time on the units, where much clinical learning happens, appear mainly in needs assessments rather than in their own accounts of the first semester. That is the gap the study addresses.
Chapter 3 in Brief
Design. Qualitative description, chosen to produce a comprehensive account in participants' everyday language with low-inference interpretation (Sandelowski, 2000). Participants. Twelve to fifteen nurses whose first full term of clinical teaching in a Kentucky baccalaureate program ended within the past year, recruited through six programs other than the researcher's own; the range is supported by evidence on when interview themes stabilize (Guest et al., 2006) and by the narrow aim and specific shared experience of the group (Malterud et al., 2016). Data collection. One audio-recorded video interview of about an hour, using a guide in which each question is mapped to a research question, followed by an optional review of a summary of findings. Analysis. Inductive coding and theme development through the six phases of Braun and Clarke (2006); the transition model enters only at the discussion stage, once themes exist.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness follows the four criteria associated with Lincoln and Guba (1985). Credibility is supported by member checking with participants who agree to review a summary and by peer debriefing with a doctoral colleague outside nursing. Transferability is supported by thick description of programs, hospital units and participants' backgrounds, reported in aggregate. Dependability rests on an audit trail recording coding decisions, theme revisions and their reasons at each analytic phase, as recommended by Nowell et al. (2017). Confirmability is supported by a reflexive journal opened ahead of any interviewing, in which I record how my own history as a former part-time instructor shapes what I notice (Berger, 2015).
Protection of Participants
The principal risks are identification by an employer and distress in recalling a hard semester. Programs will forward the invitation without learning who responds, consent will be confirmed twice and documented without a signature, transcripts will be stripped of program, hospital and personal names and quotations will be edited where needed so that small programs cannot be recognized, a practice that calls for case-by-case judgment (Saunders et al., 2015). Interviews will pause if a participant becomes upset, and support resources will be offered to everyone. Recordings will be deleted after transcripts are checked, and de-identified data will be kept on encrypted storage for five years.
Intended Use of the Findings
The findings are meant to be used. Each participating program will receive a short practice brief, separate from the dissertation, that summarizes the themes in plain language and suggests changes to orientation, mentoring and communication between schools and clinical units. The brief will contain no quotations that could identify a participant and will be sent only after the dissertation is approved. In my own program, the results will guide a redesign of clinical instructor orientation planned for the following academic year. Beyond Kentucky, a manuscript for a nursing education journal will report the findings so that other programs can compare them with their own experience.
Limitations and Delimitations
Participants will be remembering a term that may be twelve months behind them, and instructors who had the hardest first semesters may have left teaching and be unreachable, which could make the findings more positive than the full experience. Findings from six Kentucky programs may transfer to other settings only as far as readers judge the contexts similar. The study is delimited to baccalaureate programs, hospital-based clinical teaching and the first full term, and it does not include the perspectives of students, unit nurses or program leaders.
Remaining Approvals and Timeline
Before any participant is contacted, the proposal requires approval by course faculty and my dissertation chair, the dissertation research review and the IRB, and the two outstanding letters of cooperation must be received. Following approval, the study is planned over twelve months: two for IRB revisions, four overlapping months of recruitment and interviews, three for analysis, one for member checking and the final months for writing Chapters 4 and 5. A contingency to recruit from associate degree programs is described in Chapter 3 and would be submitted as an IRB amendment if needed. Progress against this timeline will be reported to my chair at the end of each month, with any slippage flagged early.
Conclusion
The final proposal sets out a focused, aligned qualitative study of instructors whose voices are seldom heard in the research, even though students learn much of their clinical practice under them. Its problem, purpose and questions call for description; its literature shows where part-time instructors have been left out; and its methods, trustworthiness strategies and protections are matched to interviews about a sensitive professional experience. With approval, data collection can begin within the program's timeline. The approvals still required are listed so that nothing is started early.
References
Anderson, J. K. (2009). The work-role transition of expert clinician to novice academic educator. Journal of Nursing Education, 48(4), 203-208. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20090401-02
Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don't: Researcher's position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219-234. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112468475
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Carlson, J. S. (2015). Orientation, evaluation, and integration of part-time nursing faculty. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 12(1), 83-90. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijnes-2015-0036
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05279903
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. SAGE Publications.
Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., & Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: Guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1753-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315617444
McPherson, S. (2019). Part-time clinical nursing faculty needs: An integrated review. Journal of Nursing Education, 58(4), 201-206. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20190321-03
Nowell, L. S., Norris, J. M., White, D. E., & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis: Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917733847
Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing & Health, 23(4), 334-340. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-240X(200008)23:4<334::AID-NUR9>3.0.CO;2-G
Saunders, B., Kitzinger, J., & Kitzinger, C. (2015). Anonymising interview data: Challenges and compromise in practice. Qualitative Research, 15(5), 616-632. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794114550439
Schoening, A. M. (2013). From bedside to classroom: The nurse educator transition model. Nursing Education Perspectives, 34(3), 167-172. https://doi.org/10.5480/1536-5026-34.3.167
Weidman, N. A. (2013). The lived experience of the transition of the clinical nurse expert to the novice nurse educator. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 8(3), 102-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2013.04.006
The RES 6541 Module 5 assignment instructions
The closing module of RES 6541 brings everything together. Expect to submit the complete proposal, Chapters 1 through 3, revised in light of the Chapter 1 rewrite, the alignment check, the research review preparation and the IRB narrative. Some sections ask for the full chapters, others for a condensed proposal or an abstract alongside them. Either way, faculty expect consistent terms, a single purpose statement used throughout and methods that match the questions. Include any appendices your program requires, such as the interview guide, consent document and alignment table. State plainly what approvals remain before data collection can begin, since the proposal itself does not authorize contact with participants. Check the abstract last, after every chapter is final.
Inside the RES 6541 Module 5 example
The sample opens with a 110-word abstract covering problem, purpose, design, participants, analysis, trustworthiness and intended use. Chapter 1 is condensed into four labeled statements. Chapter 2 becomes one paragraph covering three themes, the clinician-to-educator transition, the needs of part-time clinical faculty and the conditions of unit-based teaching, and ends on the gap. Chapter 3 is presented through labeled entries for design, participants, collection and analysis. Separate sections give a concrete strategy for each trustworthiness criterion, the main protections for participants, limitations and delimitations, and the approvals and timeline that remain, before a brief conclusion.
Where the points sit in the RES 6541 Module 5 rubric
Final proposals are judged as complete, coherent research plans. Faculty and chairs look for a significant, well-documented problem, a purpose and questions that match the design, a literature review that establishes the gap, methods described in enough detail to carry out and evaluate, quality criteria with concrete strategies and ethical protections suited to the participants. Alignment across chapters is checked again at this stage. Writing should be polished and formatting consistent with APA 7 and program templates, since the proposal is the document that moves forward to research review and IRB. Clear statements of limitations and next steps show readiness to begin. A proposal that names its remaining approvals reads as ready to move forward. Appendices are checked too.
Common RES 6541 Module 5 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Submitting the final proposal can feel like the moment every earlier comment comes due at once. If you are pulling revised chapters together and worried about consistency, or your chair has asked for a condensed version or abstract, our writers can help assemble and polish the proposal. Send your three chapters, your appendices and the latest feedback with the prompt, and we will deliver a unified, aligned proposal with an abstract and a checklist of approvals still required. We support qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods proposals across ACE's doctoral programs. A clean final proposal shortens the road to data collection. We also prepare the practice brief or abstract your chair may request.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More RES 6541 and Ed.D. and DBA doctoral core sample papers
- RES 6541 Module 1: Chapter 1 Revision
- RES 6541 Module 2: Proposal Alignment Check
- RES 6541 Module 3: Research Review Preparation
- RES 6541 Module 4: IRB Application Narrative
- RES 6033 Module 3: Coding and Themes Paper
- RES 6302 Module 5: Defense Script and Reflection
- RES 6561 Module 1: Interpretation of Findings
- LEAD 6133 Module 2: Coaching Models Compared
RES 6541 Module 5 questions, answered
What does RES6541 Module 5 usually ask for?
The final RES6541 module usually asks for the completed dissertation proposal, Chapters 1 through 3 revised and aligned, for approval by course faculty and your chair before the research review and IRB.
What comes after proposal approval at ACE?
Typically the dissertation research review and IRB approval, along with any site permissions, before you may contact participants or collect data.
Should a qualitative proposal include an abstract?
Many chairs ask for one. A short abstract stating the problem, purpose, design, participants, analysis and intended use helps reviewers grasp the study quickly.
Where can I find a free RES 6541 Module 5 sample paper?
This page holds one: a condensed final proposal about nurses in their first term of part-time clinical teaching, running from the abstract to the approvals still needed, with thirteen sources.
How do I describe trustworthiness in a qualitative proposal?
Name the criteria you are using, such as credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, and give a concrete strategy for each that fits your design.