My Profession Teaching with Bibliography , Synopsis and Contents
BIOGRAPHICAL LANDSCAPES: NURSES’ AND HEALTH VISITORS’ NARRATIVES OF LEARNING AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Margaret Ann Volante
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of East London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
January 2005
© Margaret A Volante 2005
Abstract
The thesis illuminates biography, learning and practice and advances understanding of the development of professional knowledge and practice. The purpose of the research was to inform the pedagogical development of practice learning using a biographical perspective to investigate how nurses and health visitors use professional practice experiences to learn and generate knowledge and understandings of practice. The research is set within the healthcare policy context of lifelong and lifewide learning. The literature review builds on my own experiences. An argument is developed for practice learning to be located within a universal knowledge system that provides for the subjective and contextual complexity of nursing practice knowledge and learning. The research strategy is grounded in the theoretical perspectives of interpretive phenomenology and interactionism. Nine specialist community nurses and health visitors participated in the life story interview of biographical narrative interpretive method. Three transcripts were selected for in-depth analysis of subjective meanings of learning and professional practice. Case comparison of biographical process structures shows how biographies construct a resource for ways of knowing the world that is incorporated into professional agency. Five profiles of formal practice learning were accessible for documentary and textual analysis. Two patterns of orientation were reconstructed from this analysis: a learning practice constituted as a process of identifying and meeting learning needs through client-centred practice and public institutions constituted as a process of support and self-surveillance of the
Margaret Ann Volante
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of East London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
January 2005
© Margaret A Volante 2005
Abstract
The thesis illuminates biography, learning and practice and advances understanding of the development of professional knowledge and practice. The purpose of the research was to inform the pedagogical development of practice learning using a biographical perspective to investigate how nurses and health visitors use professional practice experiences to learn and generate knowledge and understandings of practice. The research is set within the healthcare policy context of lifelong and lifewide learning. The literature review builds on my own experiences. An argument is developed for practice learning to be located within a universal knowledge system that provides for the subjective and contextual complexity of nursing practice knowledge and learning. The research strategy is grounded in the theoretical perspectives of interpretive phenomenology and interactionism. Nine specialist community nurses and health visitors participated in the life story interview of biographical narrative interpretive method. Three transcripts were selected for in-depth analysis of subjective meanings of learning and professional practice. Case comparison of biographical process structures shows how biographies construct a resource for ways of knowing the world that is incorporated into professional agency. Five profiles of formal practice learning were accessible for documentary and textual analysis. Two patterns of orientation were reconstructed from this analysis: a learning practice constituted as a process of identifying and meeting learning needs through client-centred practice and public institutions constituted as a process of support and self-surveillance of the