SHAPING NURSING KNOWLEDGE: AN INTERPRETATIVE ANALYSIS OF CURRICULUM DOCUMENTS FROM NSW, AUSTRALIA.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 273
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Curriculum and Instruction.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: Informed by feminist and Heideggerian insights, a wide range of nursing and non-nursing literature is drawn upon to elucidate the emergence of modern nursing and its quest for its own knowledge base. Attempts to structure nursing as a science are critically evaluated. Caring, in its modern sense, is seen as an emergent construct, directed at redressing the deficiencies of "people work" in the public domain. The reasons why this construct has resisted scientization are explored.

Connections between curriculum development and nursing's quest for its own knowledge base are explored through the US literature. This exploration provides a basis for an interpretative analysis of the guidelines and curriculum documents produced in NSW Australia as a result of the total system transfer of basic nursing education from hospital-based apprenticeship style schools of nursing into higher education institutions at tertiary diploma level (three years full-time study). This move commenced in 1985 and was completed by mid 1987. The difficulties that were experienced in re-shaping the nursing knowledge base in ways appropriate to university-type teaching are used to throw light on the continuing problems of formalizing nursing knowledge. The researcher was a situated participant in this process.

The author argues that attempts to encapsulate nursing knowledge have failed and were probably based on an over-simplified understanding of the complexities of other disciplines. Further difficulties occurred because of nursing's origin in the traditional female world of care and nurturance. Feminist scholarship has argued the inadequacy of the dominant ontology to provide visibility and expression for traditional female knowledge, understanding and skills. The author argues for an opening up of nursing discourse to allow it to develop in a richer way guided by the cares and concerns of its practice.

This work can best be considered as a contribution to the ongoing self-understanding of nursing.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-02, Section: B, page: 0659.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1989.

School code: 0034.