Re-collecting and 'thinking' the story of New Zealand's postgraduate nursing scholarship development

Nursing Praxis in New Zealand, Nov, 2008 by Liz Smythe

Introduction

Thinking-back enables insights of the past to guide understanding of future possibilities. The 'thinking' focus of this paper is post-graduate education in nursing. The perspective is grounded in the lived experience of the author, draws on the experiences of other early New Zealand nurse scholars, and offers an interpretation from which others can continue 'thinking'. I was a nurse (and later a midwife) in an era when it was considered highly unusual for nurses to move on to postgraduate study. When I stepped into those circles I met the pioneers, nurses who had studied outside of the discipline of nursing and had convinced others that nursing itself had a place within the university. It was an era of excitement, indeed exhilaration, as together we explored the possibilities of postgraduate nursing education. An opportunity for a group of nurse scholars from the past four decades of postgraduate nursing education to meet together and re-collect their memories birthed this paper. While the manner of collecting data fits within the expectations of research, this paper is written as a philosophical hermeneutic analysis to provoke thinking. It draws on insights from Heidegger [1889-1976] to discern the ways in which the nature of education took shape. The aim is not to present an historical overview but rather to open to question current and future 'ways'.

Understanding Nursing as 'Thing'

Thinking that underpins this paper is drawn from Heidegger's writing on 'The Thing' (1975). To engage in this hermeneutic thinking Heidegger's question 'what is the jugness of the jug?' (p. 172) is paralleled with What is the postgradedness of postgraduate nursing education?' In other words, what is it that makes / shapes postgraduate nursing education to be what it is? Heidegger describes a jug as "a vessel, something of the kind that holds something else within it" (p. 166). For example, a china jug may be to put milk into for then pouring milk into tea cups. Yet, on another day, it could be used to hold cream, or salad dressing, or mulled wine. While the jug itself might be called 'the milk jug', its name does not confine the ways in which it can be used. What matters about the jug is not what it is called, or what goes in it, but what gets poured out. I have a particular expectation about the fluid that comes out of the jug to meet my morning porridge. I am likely to be more open to a range of possibilities to dress my salad. It is not the jug itself that 'gives' the eating experience. Yet because the jug is a 'thing' we tend to make assumptions about what the 'thing' holds and how it will be used, forgetting the freedom that exists with respect to what goes into the 'thing' and therefore, having been held within it, emerges on pouring.

Extending this metaphor, there is a 'jug' called 'Postgraduate nursing education'. It holds teaching and learning, but like the china jug it merely holds whatever is put in. It also holds Nursing Council of New Zealand mandates, University funding arrangements, scopes of practice, employment opportunities, social expectations, and suchlike. Heidegger (1975) clarifies that, "The jug is not a vessel because it was made; rather, the jug had to be made because it is this holding vessel" (p. 168). Similarly, postgraduate nursing education does not exist because it is a thing. Rather it 'is' because of what nursing and the health services need it to be and do. The 'jug' called postgraduate education is known for its specific function and purpose.

The key insight offered by Heidegger (1975) in relation to the jug is that what matters most is not the jug itself, but that it is empty, can be filled with the fluid we desire and then poured to fulfil a particular need. "The emptiness, the void, is what does the vessel's holding. The empty space, this nothing of the jug, is what the jug is as the holding vessel" (p. 169). A jug becomes a jug in the taking, holding and pouring, that is, in receiving and giving that which is not directly connected to the jug other than it is fluid that needs to be held within a container. The potter who shapes the jug creates the void, the holding space, but it is what goes into and comes out of the jug that makes the jug what it 'is'. Thus emerges the "jugness of the jug" (p. 172).

I argue that postgraduate nursing education is mandated by society, and by the profession itself, as a 'thing' with attention given mainly to the creation of the thing as object, forgetting the void that lies waiting to be filled at the whim of the people who flow in, through and back out of a wide variety of educational experiences. The 'postgradedness of nursing education', meaning the nature of learning experience to grow and enhance both the individual nurse and nursing as a discipline, becomes what it is in a curious manner of happenstance. Just as I can decide to put mulled wine into my china jug, so there are choices made by the individual, the teacher, and the nursing programme designers as to what will go into the jug of postgraduate nursing education 'today'. This hermeneutic study reveals something of those decisions and experiences over the period of the 1960s-1990s.