This paper is based on a book which focuses a research about the paradigm change in higher education and the emergence of new competencies for nurse teachers (Mestrinho, 2012), resulting from the numerous changes that occur in higher education in Portugal, due to its inclusion in the European area. In nurse education those changes is a result from the reorganization of nursing schools and their relationships with professional contexts.

The theoretical framework focuses on the teachers' professionalism which presupposes an ideal of public service, ethical, personal, professional awareness, guiding values for the professionality, understood as a set of competences comprising knowledge, attitudes and skills required for the professional performance (Estrela, 2001; Gewirtz et al. 2009).

The main research issue is the following: Which view of nurse teachers about the changes that have occurred in nursing education? Which influence that such changes have on their conceptions of teaching and pedagogical practices?

The objective is: to develop the consolidation of specific competencies for nurse teachers, at the level of pedagogic activity, research and dissemination of knowledge, founding a sense to innovation.

The research is based on the interpretative paradigm with a qualitative methodology. It uses semi-structured in-depth interviews. The sample includes twenty nurse teachers from four higher educational state nursing colleges in Lisbon.

The results show the development of a benchmarking based on nursing teacher’s concepts on their professionalism, illustrating numerous pedagogical practices, which integrates four domains of competencies from nurse teachers: ethical; socio-pedagogical; self-developmental and socio-organizational competencies.

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