The aims of this qualitative research is in understanding how the teaching methods of nursing instructors favor the student's development in competency. Eight nursing instructors were interviewed in a non-directive approach. A thematic as well as a structural analysis of the data indicates that in the majority of cases, their methods are based primarily on an impression and conditioning model, and in an isolated approach on an interactive and constructive model. The analysis of the nursing instructors' accounts in regards to their role as educators illustrates: an inadequacy between teaching goals and the choices of pedagogical methods; an ambivalent and unclear understanding of their role as instructor leading to the privileging of strategies for their success rate over teaching quality. inconsistencies in conveying the training and qualification evaluations as well as between the theoretical and clinical evaluations. In conclusion, various individual strategies, institutional and national, are offered with the view of favoring a competence-based approach for nursing training.