Summaries
Donald Broady & Ingrid Heyman, 1996: Caring and nursing research an emerging scientific field? /Omvårdnadsforskning, ett vetenskapligt fält i vardande?/. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, Vol 1, No , pp 192-209. Stockholm ISSN 1401-6788.
During recent decades a new domain of research has emerged which is usually termed ²omvårdnadsforskning² (caring and nursing research). A precondition has been that nurses, a category without previous academic recognition, have started to write PhD-theses, entered academia and thereby challenged the medical doctors¹ monopoly on knowledge.
The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, it reports a study on the emergence of Swedish caring and nursing research as an academic discipline based on data which emanate from text analyses of the 65 PhD theses written by nurses in Sweden 19741991 and a mailed questionnaire to the authors. One important question posed in the research concerns to what extent and in what respect caring and nursing research constitutes a scientific field in Pierre Bourdieu¹s sense.
Secondly, the article has a methodological focus. According to our results caring and nursing research does not (yet) function as a field and therefore may not be studied in the same manner as fully-fledged fields in Bourdieu¹s sense. The article thus illustrates how Bourdieuian concepts of capital, strategy etc. and techniques like correspondence analysis might be used in the study of a domain that is not a proper scientific field.
A typical thesis written by a nurse in Sweden is founded on some kind of psychological theory, varying from psychoanalysis to behavioural therapy. Also sociological or philosophical theories as well as American nursing and caring theories occur, though less frequently. When it comes to research techniques the influence from bio-medicine is most apparent. Empiristic techniques are dominating, which means that data ²speak for themselves.² Problems concerning measurement techniques are central. Several authors have developed their own measurement instruments and scales. When it comes to the research subject, most theses treat clinical care and pathological conditions. If we distinguish between nursing and caring, the main stream of the theses have highlighted phenomena exclusively in nursing (i.e. not caring) with an outspoken interest of improving practice. Considerably fewer have focused on the caring phenomena in those cases most often aspects of interaction, interpretation and understanding. Some theses concern the theoretical development in the emerging field.
In short, an average thesis is with respect to theory marked by psychological traditions and, with respect to techniques and subjects, marked by medical research traditions. In the present study we are, though, /more interested in the distinctive features within the domain.
Correspondence analyses of properties of the doctoral theses show that the ²space of possibilities² available for a nurse who writes her dissertation is split into three main regions, which might be labelled 1) biomedical, 2) social science, and 3) nursing research in a narrower sense. The scientific tools, research techniques and genre conventions available in each one of these three regions have more in common with the values and standards cultivated within the faculty of medicine, within the social sciences respectively within nursing practice and nurse education than with each other.
Especially (bio-)medical science exerts a heavy influence on the domain. This dominance is revealed by the fact that 42 doctoral theses out of 65 have been supervised by medical doctors. Also the majority of opponents and members of the committees have been representatives of medical science. The fact that positions of authority are held by agents representing other scientific fields makes a clear indication of the subordination with respect to established academic fields.
The dominance of medical science is of course most evident in the first region, the (bio-) medical. Here the designs are often similar to the physicians¹ clinical investigations, making use of comparisons between a research group and a control group, measurement scales, statistical treatment of quantitative variables, etc. The genre conventions are often similar to those of medical science, i.e. the theses are short (less than 100 pages), written in English, composed of a handful of previously published papers, and with a formalised disposition (background, purpose, data presentation, methods, results, discussionŠ).
Separate correspondence analyses of the social characteristics of the authors (social origin, educational capital, academic power, lifestyle indicators, etc.) reveal a first factor separating those equipped with a large amount of scientific capital and academic power from those lacking these resources. Thus at the one end of this polarity are the dominating agents in the domain, the first generation of nursing and caring researchers who guide numerous post-graduate students, take part in academic organisations and networks, function as editors or referees for scientific journals, etc.
At one extreme of the second factor are the authors who most willingly identify themselves with the new nursing and caring discipline. They have undertaken rather weak general educational and academic investments. They are the second generation of nursing and caring researchers, fostered by the first generation. (It might be that a field of nursing and caring science will develop between the two poles representing those two generations.)
The other extreme of the second factor singles out those authors who resist being categorised as belonging to the nursing and caring discipline. They have undertaken considerable educational and academic investments, visited many conferences, written books, etc. They are dependent on the recognition from colleagues of other disciplines and willingly identify themselves as scholars, not as nursing and caring specialists.
Simultaneous analyses of both the space of possibilities and the space of social positions indicate that the stands the authors have taken in scientific questions meant much more than most of the social factors. In other words, the polarities within the domain are, above all, explained by the differences between the research milieus which are recruiting the nurses as post-graduate students.
There are some signs indicating that a new scientific field might be emerging. Correspondence analyses of the space of positions show that there are hierarchies between authors with a high versus low amount of scientific prestige and academic power. There is also an ongoing institutionalisation with regard to titles (professorships in caring and nursing research), post-graduate education and post-doc research programmes, research administration, specific associations, etc.
More probable is, though, that the domain in its present state will not be able to function as a field. A scientific field in Pierre Bourdieu¹s sense is characterised by a sufficient degree of autonomy in relation to other fields. This does not count for caring and nursing research yet. Caring and nursing research is still a dominated domain, and above all by the medical scientific field.
Donald Broady, Department of Teacher Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, S-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden.
Ingrid Heyman, Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2109, S-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden.
pp 248-249
Rolf Lander, 1996: Calculating means of deep and surface study approaches. Pupils¹ relations to study tasks as indicators of educational quality/Medelvärden för djupa och ytliga studiemönster. Elevernas förhållningssätt till studieuppgifterna som kvalitetsindikatorer/. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, Vol 1, No 4, pp 210-228. Stockholm ISSN 1401-6788.
The concepts of a deep and a surface study approach was invented during the seventies in order to characterize the ways students tried to come to grips with the problem of understanding and reporting their understanding of a learning task. This research took place within a qualitative research tradition, but the concepts were immediatly used within a quantitative tradition trying to find indicators of learning which could be used to describe and analyze educational institutions. In spite of the fact that the concepts of deep and surface approach were coined by Ference Marton and his colleagues in Gothenburg, until recently it has been very rare that anyone in Sweden has used the quantitative applications of them. This article presents the quantitative versions of study approaches mainly operationalized by Noel Entwistle and John Biggs. It also presents operationalizations made by the author building on Entwistle¹s work. Within indicator systems the study approaches have been shown to have systematic covariation with important features of the learning environment. Some examples of this are given.
Entwistle and Ramsden (1983) placed the deep approach within a meaning orientation together with the concepts relating ideas, use of evidence and intrinsic motivation. The deep approach indicates the will to know and to understand in depth what the task is about, the following two concepts indicate ways of doing this, and the last concept is about the motivational basis for such endeavours. The surface approach is placed within a reproducing orientation together with syllabus boundness, fear of failure and extrinsic motivation. A surface approach is taken when the student fails to see the point or structure of the task and has to learn it by heart. The orientations are built up in similar ways, but the motivational aspect seems stronger in the reproducing orientation.
Entwistle and Ramsden also made measures of two other learning styles borrowed from Pask and his colleagues (Pask 1976), comprehension learning and operation learning, and their two "pathologies" globetrotting and improvidence. Comprehension learning may be defined as divergent thinking or ¹mapping out¹ a sub ject as part of the comprehension of new ideas. When this fails globetrotting results, which is lofty analogies or simple generalizations with unsuffient basis in facts. Operation learning means an engagement in problem solving that is reliant on factual detail and logical analysis. The logical analysis may fail because analogies used are inadequate for finding an overarching structure in the task, which is improvidence.
In this first version of the instrument Entwistle and Ramsden also had an achieving orientation. It includes a strategic approach meant to describe students who systematically use the environment (time and space and teachers¹ cues) in order to maximize their results. The orientation also includes disorganized study methods, negative attitudes to studying and achievement motivation.
John Biggs (1987, 1993) came to a similar solution and also used operationa lizations of a similar kind when he presented his deep, surface and achieving approaches. However, compared to Entwistle and Ramsden, he rationalized among the concepts at the same time as he tried to make a more clear distinction between motive and strategy. Each approach contains two factors measuring the motive and the strategy respectively, and the idea is that these two normally work together for the student.
There are dissimilarities in operationalizations. Biggs quite regularly finds that a surface approach may be succesful in certain areas of study, especially in science. He thereby seems to have used measures which Entwistle put into the concept of operation learning. This is about the need to master factual details in certain study areas, and when details have to be memorized the strategy may come near to a surface approach in Biggs interpretation.
There are several versions of the instrument first published in Entwistle and Ramsden, and in some the achievement orientation with its strategic approach is taken away. Doubts have been cast on the stability of this factor and the cultural validity of it outside Anglo-saxon or European learning environments. Biggs still uses it claiming its validity and support in certain studies.
Both Entwistle and Biggs stress the context-dependent nature of study approaches at the same time as there is a certain amount of stability coming from preferences rooted in personality and longterm experience. The latter is especially true for the deep approach. The use of which more likely built up together with a deeper motivational investment, while a surface approach is easier to take up when faced with e.g. a heavy work load and an examination focusing on detailed knowledge.
The context-dependent nature of the study approaches is what make them useful as indicators. If students indicate that they use a deep approach it is reasonable to conclude that the learning environment tolerates or even stimulates this. If students indicate that they use a surface approach it is likely that the learning environment has forced them to memorize in order to learn for the test with a high risk of forgetting much of it afterwards and failing to develop deeper conceptions of the content.
An example of a study of the relations between study approaches and charachteristics of the learning environment comes from Hong-Kong where Gow and Kember (1993) interviewed university teachers about their conceptions of their teaching and its purpose. Based on this two questionnaire scales were constructed and validated. More than 3.000 students responded to the instrument. They had earlier been given Bigg¹s instrument about study approaches. For each of 15 departements correlations could be calculated between the three study approaches and the nine subscales of the instruction mode of ¹learning facilitation¹ and ¹knowledge transmission.¹ The most impressive results were the negative relation between surface approach and learning facilitation, and the negative relations between deep approach and knowledge transmission. Change data were also available, and they showed that the deep approach became radically rarer over time among students attending departements dominated by knowledge transmission instruction while the surface approach at the same time increased somewhat.
The author¹s own operationalizations of study approaches borrow mostly from Entwistle and were first tested among students within health care education at the tertiary level (Lander 1996). Exploratory factor analysis supported deep approaches of three kinds: Focussing, associating and critical approaches. The focussing approach is related to ¹deep approach¹, the associative approach is a blend of items from ¹comprehensive learning¹ and ¹relating ideas¹, critical approach lies near ¹use of evidence.¹ Two surface approaches are very near the Entwistlean origin: A fragmentary and a memorizing appraoch. Cronbach¹s alfa were in the order mentioned .64, .68, .75, .79 and .67. This may seem low but is not necessarily so compared to what is reported in the literature. When combined into scales of deep and surface approaches the homogenity is quite satisfactory. Later studies have been able to repeat this factor solution in questionnaires where students in upper-secondary programs (both academic and vocational) have judged their general study approaches at this level. However it is clear that the validation of scales needs more advanced methods like confirmatory factor analysis, and this seem also to be the trend internationally.
Rolf Lander, Department of Education and Educational Research, Göteborg University, Box 300, S-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden.
pp 250-251
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