ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will describe how sociological theory was used to analyse the assumptions that underpin the field of nurse education. This is by means of ‘extended philosophical analysis’ (Harré and Secord, 1972) of the discipline’s public forms of thought as represented by a sample of its published literature or ‘pedagogic discourse’, defined for the purposes of this work as any written arte-fact that represents ‘the field talking about itself’ (Maton, 2004, p.61). Dowling (1999) argues that within this context, ‘the reading of texts becomes a research activity to the extent that it enables or proceeds from a theorising of the activity to which the text is to be referred’ (accessed 13/2/2011). This means that the selection, analysis and reporting of texts describing a particular phenomenon are guided by one or more theoretical frameworks or ‘refractory prisms’ (Maton, 2004) that provide a symbolic depiction of those phenomena. The theories themselves can also be subjected to confirmation or disconfirmation however, on the basis 66of their ability to accurately predict, describe, explain or prescribe responses to those phenomena (Chinn and Kramer, 1991) in a ‘continuous movement between theory and data’ (Maton, 2004, p.72).
