Well, it is my pleasure to join you again. And this time I will be talking about how to integrate human caring theory
into nursing education. However, I'm going to frame it
as really how to consider a caring science curriculum,
which is exactly the same thing. But I'm using different terminology,
both about theory guided caring science curriculum, but
also caring science as a curriculum guide. Now, what do we mean by
what is a caring science curriculum or what is the
definition of curriculum? A
ctually, the true
definition of curriculum is really the relationship between faculty
and students, between staff and students. So when we think about content
and about all the facts that we have to teach
and all the learning that has to occur, if we do that in a sterile, remote,
robotic way without being attentive
to creating an environment for learning which is based upon caring relationships
and kindness and loving kindness as we know from the theory,
then you can actually create practitioner
s who do not know how to translate theory
into practice for patients. So what happens in the classroom is happening in the clinical. So if we don't find ways to introduce caring curriculum into nursing education, we will find that we're only teaching
technical competencies. And so a caring science curriculum,
a theory guided human caring curriculum has to pay as much attention
to helping students to learn about the phenomena of human caring,
the language of human caring, the practice of human ca
ring as they do for technology. So the competencies of caring,
or what I would refer to as literacy of caring
has to be balanced with the technology. So in this model,
you could actually begin to think about all those skills labs that we have
and think about creatively. How would you reframe those skills labs? that are all focused on technology
and reframe them so their arts labs like teaching
about the artistry of our humanity, how to be present, how to
implement and live out these Ten Caritas
Processes within a given moment in the classroom
as well as in the clinical setting, as part of a new laboratory model
of learning about our humanity. So this too is part of a very subtle
but significant transition to move from a content driven curriculum,
which then is very sterile and is really based upon
giving people data. And in this understanding,
we begin to reveal that giving people knowledge
or giving people data or information is not the same as knowledge. Information is not knowledge
,
content is not knowledge per say. Content is just facts content like that is not necessarily knowledge
and knowledge. Giving people knowledge
is not necessarily understanding. So understanding is not also taking it to the level of integrating it
into the personal practice. So it becomes the students knowledge,
personal knowledge for them that they take this content, that you've given them, these facts,
all this understanding, but take it into a make it there so they can live it out
and give vo
ice and language to it. That's a whole different education
model of new forms of pedagogy. So in this kind of curriculum,
we begin to introduce what's referred
to as emancipatory pedagogies. You might recreate your classroom
so you have a circle instead of a big auditorium
with all the lines and the rows lined up where people do
not see each other. And some of the foundational work
in caring science curriculums has been identified
by my colleague and scholar, a beautiful person who with
whom I
've worked Dr. Nia Nadine's,
and she was the Dean of Education at Stanford University,
and she began to do work on caring and really the ethics of caring
from a very perspective of based upon a caring ethic
in relationships. And in her work, she described
about four major ingredients. If you're an educator and you would like to introduce
caring science as a framework. There's certain principles and guidance
that you can begin to pay attention to. One of them,
she says, of course, requires pract
ice. So when you are introducing
a caring science curriculum in the classroom, you create an environment
where the students are practicing caring and the Ten Caritas Process
among themselves, the way they teach to respond to
each other, the way they treat each other, the way they teach to respond to
each other, the way they treat each other, the way in which you create a community
of caring within the classroom. So you're practicing in the classroom. What you're also going to be able
to take out
and translate
directly into clinical practice. Second ingredient that she identified has to do with modeling. So we always hear about role modeling. But in this model, we're not talking
about role modeling in the sense of trying to get somebody to be like somebody else
and role model to be like another person. But this is the educator's approach
to modeling that helps that student, that other
to become their best self model, their best self of who they are,
the authenticity of their being and b
ecoming rather
than trying to be like somebody else. And this takes a very special way
of being in relation you would actually live out
some of the character's processes so that you can actually be authentic
with a student and helping them define and their best way to model themselves,
to learn to practice caring. Another ingredient of the caring curriculum that's been identified
by Noddings has to do with what she referred
to as authentic dialog. We can give all these facts
and all this content
and all this knowledge,
but if there are not opportunities for students to process that knowledge,
to have authentic dialog, and understand that any question
that anybody needs to ask, it's really like a sacred act
that any question is sacred. And we need to create space
where students can feel safe and ask questions about any parts
of what they don't understand. And then you have an authentic dialog
among themselves and each other. We learn from each other,
and we're doing this in a practice s
etting where we're actually learning,
caring and living caring in the practice of the classroom as well as what can be
translated directly into practice. Likewise,
the last aspect of what she identified, which is a beautiful concept
and it's the one I love the most, she says. We have a responsibility to affirm or confirm for the student their highest ethical ideal for themselves,
even if they can't see it for themselves. At the moment. So if you have a student who's struggling,
who's suffering,
they might be really hard on themselves. But if you can help to hold them in their
highest ethical ideal of who they are and who they wish to become, it
actually can be transformative for them. And it's a life changing event. This would to be an example
of a caring moment. The caring moments need to be included
in the classroom as they are in a patient nurse situation
in the clinical setting. So anything you teach in the education
is going to be transferred directly over if students are exposed
to a very authoritarian, professional distancing model in education
for the teaching and learning. They're going to go right into clinical
setting and start doing that authoritarian professional distancing with patients
and be this objective person rather than be authentically present. Living out the Ten Caritas Processes
that flow from education to practice as one art act. This is referred to as praxis. So in my work of Caring science
and the theory of human caring in education, in practice,
i
n administration, in policy, all of this has to do with really
living this out in entirely different way. As one art act is referred to in my latest book as Praxis. Praxis meaning the knowing,
being, and doing as one art act in that moment
with another human being and praxis. The concept of praxis is informed
practice. It's informed by your values,
it's informed by your consciousness,
it's informed by your intentionality. It is informed by your theories
and your approach to knowledge and what c
ounts as knowledge. Empirical knowledge alone is not enough
knowledge for us to understand and teach. We have to allow for all ways of knowing,
as I've mentioned earlier. So this whole transition
from a traditional content driven curriculum to an authentic human caring theory guided curriculum
is transformative for the faculty, for the staff, for the culture, as well
as for the students. This allows
for these emancipatory pedagogies which brings in art and humanities and film and all sorts of al
ternative ways of knowing that we have not systematically
built into nursing education. The other thing
I would like to just emphasize in terms of the framework for a caring science
curriculum has to do with how we begin to understand
the discipline of nursing, which is helping to inform our education
as well as our practice. The discipline is what holds the values
for the profession. The discipline is what those eternal, timeless values
that cannot be substituted for this. The discipline is wha
t holds the theories. It doesn't have to be my theory,
it has multiple theories. In nursing or guiding our practice. But if you're using a theory in education
or you're using a theory in practice, you're going to be changing your practice because you're going to be able
to see things differently. You're going to be able
to do things differently, whether it's in the classroom
or whether it's in the clinical setting. So the other part of this transition is
then to bring in multiple ways of knowing
. For example, you can take any assignment,
any clinical assignment, any medical diagnosis, any treatment model
that needed to be attended to for the learning. And you can invite students to explore it
through their personal ways of knowing, through their intuitive ways of knowing,
through art and esthetic ways of knowing through empirical, technical,
medical ways of knowing that phenomena. Or you can have them explore it
in any of these expanded ways,
what I refer to as expanded epistemologies
And then it opens up
an entirely new way of us addressing the human dimensions, humanity, all those vicissitudes of human existence
that patients are going through. Students are going through. And we have the parallel
that what's happening in the education is likewise
happening in the clinical setting. They're basically one and the same. But we need to have the structure and the understanding of how
the discipline is informing our work, how our theories are
informing our educational structure an
d how it influences indirectly
and directly into the clinical setting. So I hope this is a way to summarize the importance of understanding
how theory how the discipline of nursing
is and can and must start informing our education
so we can change practice. Thank you very much for your time.
Comments