Grading Student Midwives Practice : A Case Study Exploring Relationships, Identity and Authority

This book investigates the education and assessment of student midwives in clinical practice, paying particular attention to how their practice is graded.

Chenery-Morris brings primary research, which explores students, mentors, and midwifery lecturers perspectives of practice learning and its assessment, together with the international literature on clinical knowledge, teaching and learning in practice and assessment of students drawn from a range of healthcare and education professions. Discussing how practice is graded, what constitutes valid practice knowledge, learning in clinical practice, evaluating practice learning and failing students, this book uses Basil Bernstein’s theories to throw light on how we assess and whether we should assess performance in addition to whether a student is competent to practise.

This is an important contribution to the field of midwifery education. It will also be relevant to those with an interest in practice education from a range of healthcare professions.

Sam Chenery-Morris is an Associate Professor in Midwifery and Associate Dean for Learning, Teaching and Student Experience, Head of Nursing and Midwifery and Lead Midwife for Education at the University of Suffolk. She has worked clinically as a nurse and midwife, as an academic and researcher in her career. Her clinical and pedagogic practice has developed experientially and through academic study over the last 30 years. She has taught midwifery and research modules and been Course Leader for the BSc (Hons) Midwifery [shortened]. She was appointed as an Academic Midwife for the NICE Antenatal Care Clinical Guideline Committee in 2018. This guideline is the largest in the NICE portfolio and it will shape the care for almost 700,000 pregnant women a year in England and Wales when it is published in 2021.