Curriculum in crisis, pedagogy in disrepair: A provocation
Kim Walker
Nursing (Applied Research), St Vincent's Private Hospital, Darlinghurst NSW; Nursing Research Institute, St Vincent’s & Mater Health Sydney;
Australian Catholic University, Sydney NSW
PP: 19 - 29
Abstract
Curriculum, as we know it, has always had a culture: Protestant. That is ... the word and concept of curriculum have [since the mid 1500s] been embedded in a Protestant, bourgeois, commercial/capitalist culture.
(Doll, 2008, p.190)
'Pedagogy' is a more complex and extensive term than 'teaching' ... [t]o propose a curriculum is to propose a political vision.
(Simon in Gore, 1993, p.36)
In this admittedly partisan text, I examine the broad contours of the nursing curriculum and pedagogy in Australia today (and while this unashamed parochialism might limit for an international audience the ideas herein, the issues being given voice might also resonate unexpectedly with those who harbour similar concerns in their part of the world). Much of what follows is drawn from personal observations over the last thirty years and frequent and often fraught conversations with peers and colleagues who have long worked in the tertiary and health service sectors. While there is a growing body of literature that supports many of the claims here there is also relative published silence around others that are perhaps more contentious.
Keywords
nursing practice, nursing curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, evaluation, training
References
Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Cheung RB, Sloane DM and Silber JH (2003) Educational levels of hospital nurses and surgical patient mortality. Journal of the American Medical Association 290(12): 1617-1623.
Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Sloane DM, Sochalski J and Silber JH (2002) Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, staff burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Journal of the American Medical Association 288: 1987-1993.
Anthony MK and Preuss G (2002) Models of care: The influence of nurse communication on patient safety. Nursing Economics 20(5): 209-215.
Bartle J (2000) Clinical supervision: Its place within the quality agenda. Nursing Management 7(5): 30-33.
Benner P and Wrubel J (1989) The primacy of caring: Stress and coping in health and illness. Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley.
Boursicot K and Roberts T (2006) Setting standards in a professional higher education course: Defining the concept of the minimally competent student in performance-based assessment at the level of graduation from medical school. Higher Education Quarterly 60(1): 74-90.
Brown J (2008) How clinical communication has become a core part of medical education in the UK. Medical Education 42: 271-278.
Conway J and McMillan M (2006) Connecting clinical and theoretical knowledge for practice. In J Daly, S Speedy and D Jackson (Eds) Contexts of nursing: An introduction 2nd edn, pp.317-331, Sydney: Elsevier.
Cooper PG (2008) A call for a paradigm shift in nursing and healthcare leadership. Nursing Forum 43(1): 1.
Daly J, McLeod Clarke J, Lancaster J, Bednash G and Orchard C (2008) The global alliance for nursing education and scholarship: Delivering a vision for nursing education. International Journal of Nursing Studies 45: 1115-1117.
Dikelmann N and Ironside PM (2002) Developing a science of nursing education: Innovation with research. Journal of Nursing Education 41: 379-380.
Doll WE (2008) Complexity and the culture of curriculum. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40(1): 190-212.
Dudek NL, Marks MB and Regher G (2005) Failure to fail: The perspective of clinical supervisors. Academic Medicine 80(10): S84-S87.
Ferguson L and Day RA (2005) Evidence-based nursing education: Myth or reality? Journal of Nursing Education 44(3): 107-115.
Fitzpatrick JF (2008) The art of teaching the art of nursing: Where are the nursing virtuosos? Nursing Education Perspectives 29(2): 65.
Frank B (2008) Enhancing nursing education through effective academic-service partnerships. Annual Review of Nursing Education 6: 25-43.
Gaynor L, Gallasch T, Yorkston E, Stewart S, Bogossian F, Fairweather C et al (2006) The future nursing workforce in Australia: Baseline data for a prospective study of the profile, attrition rates and graduate outcomes in a contemporary cohort of undergraduates. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing 25(2): 11-20.
Gore JM (1993) The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feminist discourses as regimes of truth. New York: Routledge.
Hartigan-Rogers JA, Cobbett SL, Amirault MA and Muise-Davis ME (2007) Nursing graduates' perceptions of their undergraduate clinical placement. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship 4(1): 1-12.
Hofler LD (2008) Nursing education and transition to the work environment: A synthesis of national reports. Journal of Nursing Education 47(1): 5-12.
Jackson D and Daly J (2008) Nursing and pre-registration nursing education under the spotlight again. Collegian 15: 1-2.
Jacobsen L and Grindel C (2006) What is happening in pre-licensure RN clinical education? Findings from the faculty and administrator survey on clinical nursing education. Nursing Education Perspectives 27(7): 108-109.
Leners D, Sitzman K and Hessler KL (2006) Perceptions of nursing students clinical placement experiences. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship 3(1): 1-17.
Luhanga F, Yonge OJ and Myrick F (2008) Failure to assign failing grades: Issues with grading the unsafe student. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship 5(1): 1-14.
Meerabeau E (2006) Poor relations? Nursing and medicine in the English academy. Higher Education Quarterly 60(1): 52-73.
Mooney M (2007) Newly qualified Irish nurses' interpretations of their preparation and experiences of registration. Journal of Clinical Nursing 16: 1610-1617.
Murray TA (2008) An academic service partnership to expand capacity: What did we learn? The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing 39(5): 217-224.
National Review of Nursing Education (2002) Our duty of care. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Page S and Meerabeau E (2004) Hierarchies of evidence and hierarchies of education: Reflections on a multiprofessional education initiative. Learning in Health and Social Care 3(3): 118-128.
Pearcey P and Draper P (2008) Exploring clinical nursing experiences: Listening to student nurses. Nurse Education Today 28: 595-601.
Pick D (2006) The re-framing of Australian higher education. Higher Education Quarterly 60(3): 229-241.
Productivity Commission (2005 December) Australia's health workforce. Research report. Canberra: Productivity Commission.
Rafferty AM, Clarke SP, Coles J, Ball J, James P, McKee M et al (2007) Outcomes of variation in hospital nurse staffing in English hospitals: Cross-sectional analysis of survey data and discharge records. International Journal of Nursing Studies 44(2): 175-182.
Reid JC (1994) Nursing education in Australian universities: Report of the National Review of Nurse Education in the Higher Education Sector - 1994 and beyond (Executive Summary) Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.
Scanlan JM, Dean Care W and Gessler S (2001) Dealing with the unsafe student in clinical practice. Nurse Educator 26(1): 23-27.
Schmitt MH (2002) It's time to revalue nursing education research. Research in Nursing & Health 25: 423-424.
Seldomridge LA and Walsh CM (2006) Evaluating student performance in undergraduate preceptorships. Journal of Nursing Education 45(5): 169-176.
Senate Community Affairs References Committee (2002) The patient profession: Time for action. Report on the inquiry into nursing. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Shields S and Watson R (2007) The demise of nursing in the United Kingdom: A warning for medicine. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 100: 70-74.
SMH (2007 September 15) Blanket rejection of PM's nursing remedy. Sydney Morning Herald, p.4.
Street A (1992) Inside nursing: A critical ethnography of nursing. New York: State University of New York Press.
Sweet M (2008) Is nursing education up to the job? Australian Nursing Journal 15(8): 24-27.
Tanner CA (2004) Nursing education research: Investing in our future. Journal of Nursing Education 43: 99-100.
Trice LB, Foster PH (2008) Improving nursing school diversity through the use of a group admission interview. AORN Journal 87(3): 522-532.
Walker K (1994) Confronting reality: Nursing, science and the micro-politics of representation. Nursing Inquiry 1(1): 46-56.
Walker K (1995) Courting competency: Nursing and the politics of performance in practice. Nursing Inquiry 2(2): 90-99.
Walker K (1997a) Toward a critical ontology: Nursing and the problem of the modern subject. In O'Farrell C (Ed) Foucault: The legacy, pp.743-754, Brisbane QLD: Queensland University of Technology Press.
Walker K (1997b) Dangerous liaisons: Thinking, doing, nursing. The Collegian 4(2): 4-14.
Walker K (2000a) Why philosophy? Nursing and the problem of truth. In J Daly, S Speedy and D Jackson (Eds) Contexts of nursing: An introduction, pp.51-65, Sydney: McClelland & Petty.
Walker K (2000b) Nursing, narrativity and research: Towards a poetics and politics of orality. In G Rolfe (Ed) Research, truth and authority: Postmodern perspectives on nursing, pp.87-102, London: Macmillan.
Walker K (2005) Postmodern pedagogy and the nursing curriculum: Collaborating for excellence. The Collegian 12(4): 36-40.
Walker K (2006) On philosophy: Nursing and the politics of truth. In J Daly, S Speedy and D Jackson (Eds) Contexts of nursing: An introduction 2nd edn, pp.60-72, Sydney: Elsevier.
Walker K (2008) Reading research and scholarship: A critical approach to effective understanding. In S Borbasi and D Jackson (Eds) Navigating the maze of nursing research: An interactive learning adventure 2nd edn, pp.202-225, Sydney: Elsevier.
Walker K (2009a) Philosophy and nursing: Exploring the truth effects of history, culture and language. In J Daly, S Speedy and D Jackson (Eds) Contexts of nursing: An introduction 3rd edn, Sydney: Elsevier (in press)
Walker K (2009b) My life, my choice? Evidence, ethics and autonomy in contemporary clinical care. In SJ Murray and D Holmes (Eds) Critical interventions in the ethics of healthcare, pp.15-32, Surrey UK: Ashgate Publishing.
Walker K and Holmes CA (2008) The 'order of things': Tracing a history of the present through a re-reading of the past in nursing education. Contemporary Nurse 30(2): 106-118.
Waters A (2008) Carter highlights 'big problems' in training and workforce planning. Nursing Standard 22(35): 9.
Webb C and Shakespeare P (2008) Judgements about mentoring relationships in nurse education. Nurse Education Today 28: 563-571.
Westwood OMR, Leinster SJ and Weinberg JR (2008) A healthcare curriculum for the 21st century: Time for flexibility? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101: 59-62.
Zungalo E, Corcoran RD (2003) Letter to the editor. Research in Nursing & Health 26: 171.
eContent Home
