- Email: [email protected]
A golden age? Response to paper “Writing-up and writing-as: Rediscovering nursing scholarship by Gary Rolfe”
Nurse Education Today 30 (2010) 98–99
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt
Letter to the Editor A golden age? Response to paper ‘‘Writing-up and writing-as: Rediscovering nursing scholarship by Gary Rolfe” Rolfe’s (2009) paper presents an interesting polemic on the influence of scientific empiricism in contemporary higher education and impact on the development of the discipline of nursing. He uses the powerful metaphors of brick makers contrasting them with architects to represent research findings (bricks) as outputs produced with little consideration of their overall contribution to theory (architectural structure). He goes on, indeed elegantly, to posit that knowledge produced from the gold standard of the randomised controlled trial (RCT) merely serves to restrict, devalue other forms of knowledge and ultimately stifle nursing scholarship. He suggests that ‘real’ research (the RCT), the quality measures used to quantify it, and the frames of reference for judging its excellence, constitute a tyranny. There is a sense in his argument that he views the discipline to have been acquiescent in adopting the values of medical science as the benchmark of excellence, and that complicity is reflected in the positive outcome of the recent UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). These actions have according to Rolfe sounded the death knell to a particular halcyon view of scholarship. Nursing represents a broad church; the active research community also embrace a range of opinion. It includes those that no doubt support Rolfe’s views to those that see the shift to positivism, even if somewhat sceptical that it has in reality occurred to the extent suggested, may be too little too late. This is not a new debate and nevertheless one that reappears regularly in the disciplinary consciousness. Whilst I would concur that there is an increase in the dominance of scientific discourse across all aspects of contemporary life; yet it remains only one voice even if it at times the loudest. The acceptability of research approaches other than the RCT appear to be gaining greater favour with those that fund research, and from disciplines that are traditionally grounded in the scientific method. Perhaps our increasing maturity as a researching discipline is serving to influence funders? Just as our willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries, and engage with experts irrespective of field when undertaking research that has relevance to nursing and patients, has not gone unrecognised. That said, Rolfe does not merely locate his disquiet at the level of research methodology, but adopts the whispering pose of a conspiracy theorist when discussing the vexations and vagaries of publication. This is possibly misplaced as the readers of this journal will recognise, scholarship appears to be alive, and well, not merely in the solitary guise of this publication. My concern with the paper starts with the representation of a golden age when academics engaged in scholarship and remained untouched by the demands of market, policy or external surveillance. That world I fail to recognise as one that ever has been inhabited by the discipline of nursing. That academic world was one no doubt largely inhabited by print based books, small numbers of students and little or no scrutiny of performance; whereas 0260-6917/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2009.07.001
the contemporary world of higher education has more in common with a closely managed, highly complex, often overly bureaucratic, knowledge industry where economic imperatives determine priorities. Technology makes access to knowledge virtual and instantaneous, someone having a thought whether blue skies, or pedestrian in Australia can communicate it rapidly electronically to a collaborator in Alaska. The meaning of a university has shifted radically from Newman’s (1852) concept of providing a broad education that develops the man who can take a skein of an idea and turn it into a reasoned argument. The modern University is more engaged in producing graduates irrespective of gender, creed or race with transferable skills fit for purpose in the job market; or indeed capable researchers on completion of postgraduate study. It is a world where performance is under constant surveillance from government, potential and existing students, sometimes their parents (customers), professional, regulatory and statutory bodies, funding agencies, collaborators, competitors and industrial partners. That does not mean scholarship is dead, merely reframed. To return to the case of nursing scholarship, a far greater tyranny than publication bias, or the pervasiveness of the RCT, is the delivery of quality undergraduate nurse education to large numbers of students needed to maintain the nursing workforce. This has long been recognised as detrimental to full realisation of disciplinary research and scholarship aspirations. This is compounded in the UK for new faculty, by the precedence of teaching qualifications over doctoral preparation. Together these have undoubtedly contributed more to the under achievement of nursing academics as empirical researchers, or producers of scholarly outputs, than anything else. Further, the number of aspirant academics that specialise in education post qualification rather than exploring the clinical science of nursing has year on year denied the discipline of the volume of bricks, never mind variety, to fashion the architectural structure that might be nursing. Lastly, Rolfe makes reference to Boyer’s work, published in the US in 1990, who argued higher education was increasingly polarised and defined only in terms of teaching and research. This dichotomy is evident in employment status – tenure track or, as in the UK, teaching only contracts. What Rolfe fails to elaborate is that Boyer offers an alternative view to the dualism of teaching versus research by conceptualising the work of academics into four areas. It is probably worth noting that Boyer’s work was based on a national survey of the professoriate working in US higher education institutions not specifically nursing. That said he usefully described scholarship as having four domains: discovery, integration, application and teaching and argued these four overlapping purposes should define the scholarly endeavour of the academic. He also offered that scholarship should have ‘‘a broader, more capricious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work” (1990, p. 16). However there still remains the pervasive dichotomy of academy and practice (Nugent, 1999). Should nursing scholarship adopt a broader definition of scholarship embracing the pursuit of
Letter to the Editor / Nurse Education Today 30 (2010) 98–99
knowledge (discovery), facilitating connections across and between disciplines to bring new insights (integration), apply understandings to the challenges inherent in health and social care (application), and transmit, transform and extend knowledge through the education of others (teaching) then there may be greater confidence that the production of scholarship embraces rigour, inculcates critical appraisal and is meaningful to nursing and nurses (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 1999). I would contend that Rolfe’s thesis that empirical scientific research is the author of the discipline’s woes and performance monitoring of research, in the UK in the form of the RAE, as detrimental to our growth as scholars, as misdirected. The recognition of nursing as an emerging discipline in RAE 2001, followed by relatively modest investment, provided much impetus to energise the science and scholarship of nursing in the UK. This was evident in the outcomes of RAE 2008. The long term effects of post-RAE 2008 funding are probably too early to judge; yet year on year investment works as seen by the success of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) in the US. Unfortunately the global economic climate may contribute more over the next decade to
99
determine the future direction and pace of research, scholarship and research in nursing. References American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 1999. Defining scholarship for the discipline of nursing. Journal of Professional Nursing 15 (6), 372–376. Boyer, E.L., 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Princeton, New Jersey. Newman, J.H., 1852/1858/1873. The Idea of a University. (accessed 30.06.09). Nugent, K., 1999. Faculty practice – the scholarship of application. Journal of Professional Nursing 15 (6), 328. Rolfe, G., 2009. Writing-up and writing-as: rediscovering nursing scholarship. Nurse Education Today 29 (8), 816–820.
Annie Topping University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt
Letter to the Editor A golden age? Response to paper ‘‘Writing-up and writing-as: Rediscovering nursing scholarship by Gary Rolfe” Rolfe’s (2009) paper presents an interesting polemic on the influence of scientific empiricism in contemporary higher education and impact on the development of the discipline of nursing. He uses the powerful metaphors of brick makers contrasting them with architects to represent research findings (bricks) as outputs produced with little consideration of their overall contribution to theory (architectural structure). He goes on, indeed elegantly, to posit that knowledge produced from the gold standard of the randomised controlled trial (RCT) merely serves to restrict, devalue other forms of knowledge and ultimately stifle nursing scholarship. He suggests that ‘real’ research (the RCT), the quality measures used to quantify it, and the frames of reference for judging its excellence, constitute a tyranny. There is a sense in his argument that he views the discipline to have been acquiescent in adopting the values of medical science as the benchmark of excellence, and that complicity is reflected in the positive outcome of the recent UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). These actions have according to Rolfe sounded the death knell to a particular halcyon view of scholarship. Nursing represents a broad church; the active research community also embrace a range of opinion. It includes those that no doubt support Rolfe’s views to those that see the shift to positivism, even if somewhat sceptical that it has in reality occurred to the extent suggested, may be too little too late. This is not a new debate and nevertheless one that reappears regularly in the disciplinary consciousness. Whilst I would concur that there is an increase in the dominance of scientific discourse across all aspects of contemporary life; yet it remains only one voice even if it at times the loudest. The acceptability of research approaches other than the RCT appear to be gaining greater favour with those that fund research, and from disciplines that are traditionally grounded in the scientific method. Perhaps our increasing maturity as a researching discipline is serving to influence funders? Just as our willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries, and engage with experts irrespective of field when undertaking research that has relevance to nursing and patients, has not gone unrecognised. That said, Rolfe does not merely locate his disquiet at the level of research methodology, but adopts the whispering pose of a conspiracy theorist when discussing the vexations and vagaries of publication. This is possibly misplaced as the readers of this journal will recognise, scholarship appears to be alive, and well, not merely in the solitary guise of this publication. My concern with the paper starts with the representation of a golden age when academics engaged in scholarship and remained untouched by the demands of market, policy or external surveillance. That world I fail to recognise as one that ever has been inhabited by the discipline of nursing. That academic world was one no doubt largely inhabited by print based books, small numbers of students and little or no scrutiny of performance; whereas 0260-6917/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2009.07.001
the contemporary world of higher education has more in common with a closely managed, highly complex, often overly bureaucratic, knowledge industry where economic imperatives determine priorities. Technology makes access to knowledge virtual and instantaneous, someone having a thought whether blue skies, or pedestrian in Australia can communicate it rapidly electronically to a collaborator in Alaska. The meaning of a university has shifted radically from Newman’s (1852) concept of providing a broad education that develops the man who can take a skein of an idea and turn it into a reasoned argument. The modern University is more engaged in producing graduates irrespective of gender, creed or race with transferable skills fit for purpose in the job market; or indeed capable researchers on completion of postgraduate study. It is a world where performance is under constant surveillance from government, potential and existing students, sometimes their parents (customers), professional, regulatory and statutory bodies, funding agencies, collaborators, competitors and industrial partners. That does not mean scholarship is dead, merely reframed. To return to the case of nursing scholarship, a far greater tyranny than publication bias, or the pervasiveness of the RCT, is the delivery of quality undergraduate nurse education to large numbers of students needed to maintain the nursing workforce. This has long been recognised as detrimental to full realisation of disciplinary research and scholarship aspirations. This is compounded in the UK for new faculty, by the precedence of teaching qualifications over doctoral preparation. Together these have undoubtedly contributed more to the under achievement of nursing academics as empirical researchers, or producers of scholarly outputs, than anything else. Further, the number of aspirant academics that specialise in education post qualification rather than exploring the clinical science of nursing has year on year denied the discipline of the volume of bricks, never mind variety, to fashion the architectural structure that might be nursing. Lastly, Rolfe makes reference to Boyer’s work, published in the US in 1990, who argued higher education was increasingly polarised and defined only in terms of teaching and research. This dichotomy is evident in employment status – tenure track or, as in the UK, teaching only contracts. What Rolfe fails to elaborate is that Boyer offers an alternative view to the dualism of teaching versus research by conceptualising the work of academics into four areas. It is probably worth noting that Boyer’s work was based on a national survey of the professoriate working in US higher education institutions not specifically nursing. That said he usefully described scholarship as having four domains: discovery, integration, application and teaching and argued these four overlapping purposes should define the scholarly endeavour of the academic. He also offered that scholarship should have ‘‘a broader, more capricious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work” (1990, p. 16). However there still remains the pervasive dichotomy of academy and practice (Nugent, 1999). Should nursing scholarship adopt a broader definition of scholarship embracing the pursuit of
Letter to the Editor / Nurse Education Today 30 (2010) 98–99
knowledge (discovery), facilitating connections across and between disciplines to bring new insights (integration), apply understandings to the challenges inherent in health and social care (application), and transmit, transform and extend knowledge through the education of others (teaching) then there may be greater confidence that the production of scholarship embraces rigour, inculcates critical appraisal and is meaningful to nursing and nurses (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 1999). I would contend that Rolfe’s thesis that empirical scientific research is the author of the discipline’s woes and performance monitoring of research, in the UK in the form of the RAE, as detrimental to our growth as scholars, as misdirected. The recognition of nursing as an emerging discipline in RAE 2001, followed by relatively modest investment, provided much impetus to energise the science and scholarship of nursing in the UK. This was evident in the outcomes of RAE 2008. The long term effects of post-RAE 2008 funding are probably too early to judge; yet year on year investment works as seen by the success of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) in the US. Unfortunately the global economic climate may contribute more over the next decade to
99
determine the future direction and pace of research, scholarship and research in nursing. References American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 1999. Defining scholarship for the discipline of nursing. Journal of Professional Nursing 15 (6), 372–376. Boyer, E.L., 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Princeton, New Jersey. Newman, J.H., 1852/1858/1873. The Idea of a University.
Annie Topping University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK E-mail address: [email protected]