Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing. Philosophical perspectives shape curriculum development perennialism’s focus on timeless ideas to reconstructionism’s emphasis on social change, these viewpoints guide educational approaches and goals. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View
Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing
Although this text centers on the creative use of teaching methods that work in nursing education, educators understand that methods do not exist apart from a framework of values, beliefs, and ideas. The foundation of curriculum design for nursing education resides in an explicit expression of the values, beliefs, and focal ideas of the discipline of nursing, which give direction to the specification of programmatic content, structure, materials, and methods.
Whether the curriculum framework and design of programs of nursing education take their focus from a highly systematized extant general theory of nursing or from a more fluid, less systematized conception of nursing’s metaparadigm, the focus of the program must be on the discipline of nursing. It is this broad framework and programmatic design that ultimately determines the appropriateness of specific teaching methods to advance knowledge for nursing. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Essential Ways of Knowing Nursing It is crucial that nursing educators understand that multiple ways of knowing are needed and even essential in education for nursing practice. Because of the nature of nursing as moral and practical in purpose and holistic in scope, ways of knowing and pathways to knowledge must be multidimensional. Historically, nursing was taught and learned largely as artful applications of traditional practices.
In the middle of the 20th century, the concept of nursing as science gained acceptance, among primarily students and faculties in programs of graduate and doctoral education. The work of Dickoff , James, and Wiedenbach (1968), the Nursing Development Conference Group (1973), and others provided ideas and language that encouraged further development in what might be termed the epistemological dimensions of nursing. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Publication of Carper’s (1979) scholarship on patterns of knowing essential for nursing ushered in a sea change in the way scholars and educators approached inquiry. Historically incompatible patterns of knowing in nursing that underpinned the two sides of the art/science argument were brought together in Carper’s thesis that knowing in nursing required four patterns or pathways.
Not only empirical and ethical knowing, but also personal and aesthetic knowing all four combined are legitimate and even essential ways of knowing for nursing. Two additional patterns have been added to the literature sociopolitical (White, 1995) and unknowing (Munhall, 1983). The work of Chinn and Kramer (2003) has significantly elaborated on the depth and scope of Carper’s initial explication by using the patterns of knowing to structure nursing knowledge. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Possibilities for the creation and selection of nursing education methods are greatly expanded when nursing educators have a detailed understanding of the idea of multiple patterns of knowing and particularly the idea that knowing in nursing requires all patterns and ways of knowing identified by Carper and others.
Understanding the complexity of nursing practice has given rise to the various ways of knowing nursing that appear in the literature. Teaching nursing using perspectives of these multiple ways of knowing assists students to understand the scope and depth of nursing knowledge and its use in practice.
Tracing the History of Nursing Education Methods: Philosophy and Practice
We will now briefly trace the evolution of the philosophy and practice of nursing education methods. A sense of history is important to creating and selecting effective nursing education methods. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
The ongoing interplay of ontology and epistemology has influenced the history of nursing education methods. This interplay of ontology and epistemology is a process that constantly evolves in the pursuit of understanding human existence and knowledge. This larger philosophical sphere of human studies influences all disciplines, including nursing.
Nursing as a service deals with people and, as such, incorporates the metaphysical studies of why people exist and in what condition and how human beings gain knowledge and interact with the environment. The history of methods of teaching/learning closely parallels the evolution of the idea of nursing as a practiced discipline and the ways of knowing are considered important to this evolutionary history. The apprenticeship model was prevalent in the early days of nursing education.
Until the 1970s, the education for nursing was widely termed “training.” In fact, there was little thought given to education for nursing. By the 1950s and 1960s, behavioral psychology had permeated education, including nursing education. The introduction of this l earning theory was an ideal philosophy and practice for what was considered “nurse’s training.”
Approaches to training that had been fine-tuned for military and industrial needs in an earlier decade resonated with nursing educators, bringing a sense of systematization and professionalism to nursing education. The model of curriculum development set forth by Tyler (1969) was attractive to nursing educators, as well as others in the field of education, due to its orderly, scientific approach to the structure of curricula.
Although a thorough discussion of the behavioral Tylerian model of curriculum is beyond the scope of this topic, Bevis (1989) has presented an excellent analysis of the impact of the Tylerian model in nursing education. The Tylerian model has been one of the dominant models used in nursing education for several decades and is based primarily on the logic of deduction and empirical knowledge.
In the Tylerian framework of education, which is still used by some educators today to varying degrees, objectives are stated and education is presented to meet the objectives rather than the unique learning needs of the student (Bevis, 1989). As the behavioral curriculum was becoming status quo in schools of nursing, new and competing psychology and educational theories of teaching/learning were being introduced. Humanistic and emancipatory theories of curriculum, widely influential in nursing, included those of Rogers, Green, and Freire.
Carl Rogers’ humanistic psychology was founded on principles antithetical to those of behaviorism. The Rogerian (1970) theory emphasizes freedom and creativity, rather than strict prescription to achieve specified end-products sought in behaviorism. Many schools of nursing, particularly those mounting baccalaureate and higher degree programs, adopted humanistic psychology tenets in the curriculum. As humanism was infiltrating all corners of nursing education, two new philosophies were being introduced into nursing education.
The aesthetic and emancipatory pedagogy articulated by Greene (1978) resonated with an emerging interest in caring as a basic value and substantive concept in nursing (Watson, 1989). In the same era, the emancipatory empowerment approach in community development espoused by Freire (1988) gained visibility in nursing education. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Both of these theories promoted the learning environment as a non-authoritarian domain in which both teachers and students were equal, reflective learners. Knowles’ theory of adult learning (1970) also influenced the shift in higher education in the last quarter of the 20th century. Many principles of andragogy or adult learning embraced a more emancipatory educational philosophy, which views the student as an active participant in learning rather than a recipient of education.
This broad evolutionary trend in nursing education was also influencing education programs of many other disciplines and professions. Similar issues were being addressed in the fields of education and other social sciences. The work of leading scholars in nursing education clearly reflects the zeitgeist of freedom and creativity prevalent in education and the larger social environment. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
As in earlier eras, the NLN committed its institutional resources to the dissemination of new educational philosophies and practices throughout the arena of nursing education. Two areas of scholarship exercise consider able influence on nursing education philosophy and practice in the last decade of the 20th century and into the 21st. The work of Bevis and Watson (1989) addressing the caring curriculum as consonant with fundamental values of nursing as a discipline and profession is illustrative of one stream of influence.
In addition, an important influence is the philosophy and practice of narrative pedagogy, initiated by Diekelmann (Diekelmann & Diekelmann, 2000). Nursing educators have shown that the use of narratives, which allow students to incorporate lived experiences and a discussion of these experiences into the learning environment, informs nursing practice.
Narrative pedagogy arises out of the common lived experiences of students, teachers, and doctors in nursing education. It is a sharing and interpretation of the narratives that is important. This new phenomenological pedagogy is identified through interpretive research in nursing education. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Conclusion
In this article, we have focused on the idea of nursing as a discipline practiced as a learned profession and its relevance to the creation and selection of nursing education methods. Methods are embodied expressions of ideas and values important to an enterprise. In the nursing education enterprise, it is important that choice of teaching/learning method be grounded in the nature of nursing as understood in the distinctive focus of nursing, the values and interrelated concepts and practice methods that define the discipline.
Accepting the role of nursing educator implies a commitment to inquiry into the very nature of the discipline. The methodological choices nurse educators make for facilitating learning in nursing directly express a view of nursing, either reflectively or unreflectively. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
Nurse educators recognize their responsibility for role modeling. What we are advocating in this topic the value of modeling in nursing education practice a clear conception of nursing as a discipline and learned profession. Choice of teaching method is a significant component of the e lessons nurse educators teach it is important that these choices reflect a conception of nursing as a discipline, a learned profession. Foundations of Curriculum Design for Nursing and History of Nursing Education in Philosophical View.
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