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How Different Can You Be and Still Survive? Homogeneity and Difference in Clinical Nursing Education

  • Barbara L Paterson , Margaret Osborne and David Gregory
Published/Copyright: October 30, 2003

The article focuses on a component of a three-year institutional ethnography regarding the construction of cultural diversity in clinical education. Students in two Canadian schools of nursing described being a nursing student as bounded by unwritten and largely invisible expectations of homogeneity in the context of a predominant discourse of equality and cultural sensitivity. At the same time, they witnessed many incidents, both personally and those directed toward other individuals of the same culture, of clinical teachers problematizing difference and centering on difference as less than the expected norm. This complex and often contradictory experience of difference and homogeneity contributed to their construction of cultural diversity as a problem. The authors provide examples of how the perception of being different affected some students’ learning in the clinical setting and their interactions with clinical teachers. They will illustrate that this occurred in the context of macro influences that shaped how both teachers and students experienced and perceived cultural diversity. The article concludes with a challenge to nurse educators to deconstruct their beliefs and assumptions about inclusivity in nursing education.

Published Online: 2003-10-30

©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Editorial
  2. Editorial for Volume 1, Issue 1
  3. Article
  4. Using Active Learning in Lecture: Best of "Both Worlds"
  5. How Different Can You Be and Still Survive? Homogeneity and Difference in Clinical Nursing Education
  6. Planning for Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes: A Process within Your Grasp
  7. Nursing Students' Perceptions of Hospital Learning Environments - an Australian Perspective
  8. Reflections on Undergraduate Nursing Education: A Look to the Future
  9. Cultural Competency Education in American Nursing Programs and the Approach of One School of Nursing
  10. A Case Study: The Clinical Application of Quadrangular Dialogue-A Caring in Nursing Teaching Model
  11. The Tyranny of Consensus: Implications for Nursing Education
  12. Exploring the Attributes of Critical Thinking: A Conceptual Basis
  13. Beyond Student Ratings: Peer Observation of Classroom and Clinical Teaching
  14. Finding the Way: A Model for Educational System Analysis
  15. Recreational Music-making: An Integrative Group Intervention for Reducing Burnout and Improving Mood States in First Year Associate Degree Nursing Students: Insights and Economic Impact
  16. Evaluation Framework for Nursing Education Programs: Application of the CIPP Model
  17. Building Communities of Scholars through a Hologogy for Online Graduate Nursing Education: Reconnecting with the Wisdom of Nursing
  18. Systematic Reviews of Health Care Interventions: An Essential Component of Health Sciences Graduate Programs
  19. A Study Abroad Experience in Guatemala: Learning First-Hand about Health, Education, and Social Welfare in a Low-Resource Country
  20. Using Standardized Patients to Teach and Evaluate Nurse Practitioner Students on Cultural Competency
  21. Outcomes of Master's Education in Nursing
  22. Creating Cohesion Between the Discipline and Practice of Nursing Using Problem Based Learning
  23. Student Experiences in Web-based Nursing Courses: Benchmarking Best Practices
  24. The Meaning of Participation in an International Service Experience Among Baccalaureate Nursing Students
  25. The Impact of an Urban Outreach Teaching Project: Developing Cultural Competence
  26. Use of a Human Simulator for Undergraduate Nurse Education
  27. Meeting the At-Risk Challenge: Empowering Nursing Students Through Mentoring
  28. Philippine Academic Visit: Brief but Life-Changing
  29. Interim Leadership in an Era of Change
  30. Developing Nursing Leaders Through Graduate Education in Pakistan
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  32. Reader Commends Banister and Schreiber, Authors of The Tyranny of Consensus: Implications for Nursing Education
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