Locating Carper's Aesthetic Pattern of Knowing within Contemporary Nursing Evidence, Praxis and Theory

Abstract

Carper's (1978) seminal work has been used in nursing education for many years as a method for introducing students to the multitude of ways of knowing that support nursing practice. This manuscript focuses on the aesthetic pattern of knowing and the ongoing debate in nursing literature surrounding aesthetics, evidence and nursing practice. Writers will describe and critique a strategy used to introduce first year undergraduate nursing students to this pattern of knowing. The implications of the critique of the project and the ongoing debate in relation to Carper's (1978) work, evidenced based practice and nursing praxis are discussed.

What information counts at the moment of practice? Information practices of renal nurses

“…Since the publication of Carper’s (1978) Fundamental Patterns of Knowing in Nursing, what counts as nursing knowledge remains a contested area with a range of arguments and approaches explicating particular ontological and epistemological arguments (Benner 1984, Cloutier et al. 2007, Porter & O’Halloran 2008, 2009, Scheel et al.…”

“…Since the publication of Carper's (1978) Fundamental Patterns of Knowing in Nursing, what counts as nursing knowledge remains a contested area with a range of arguments and approaches explicating particular ontological and epistemological arguments (Benner 1984, Cloutier et al 2007, Porter & O'Halloran 2008, Scheel et al 2008, Holmes et al 2009). There are numerous points of contention in this debate including what constitutes nurses knowledge; what types of nursing knowledge exist; and how does the process of knowing develop in nurses (Mantzoukas & Jasper 2008, Bonis 2009).…”

Reconciling nursing's art and science dualism: Toward a processual logic of nursing

“…According to Carper, esthetic, personal, and ethical patterns of knowing share a basis in ‘subjective acquaintance and the direct feeling of experience’ (, p. 16), which is the complete opposite of ‘systematically organized … general laws and theories … describing, explaining and predicting phenomena’ (, p. 14). Carper's patterns of knowing have been linked to other conceptualizations of subjective nursing knowledge, such as intuition, personal experience, and nursing action (Duff Cloutier, Duncan, & Hill Bailey, ). For example, Benner describes intuition as a ‘human experience based on participating in linguistic and cultural practices that are not reducible to context‐free elements’ (Benner, , p. 3).…”

Reorienting Esthetic Knowing as an Appropriate “Object” of Scientific Inquiry to Advance Understanding of a Critical Pattern of Nursing Knowledge in Practice

“…The majority of scholarship on esthetic knowing continues to focus on advancing its ontology and epistemology. 3,4,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Most of the "real world" scholarship on esthetic knowing has focused on explicating techniques to foster esthetic knowing in nurses, such as art appreciation, 40,41 storytelling, 42 and journaling. 43 The idea is that these techniques provoke rich descriptions of imagination and caring, which attunes nurses to creative imagination and the meaning of care.…”

“…He rejects this form of empirics as reductive and argues instead that demonstrative empirics can provide a robust counterbalance to traditional determinative empirical science by providing "evidence concerning the authenticity and humane-ness of nurseclient interrelations." 3(p10) Duff Cloutier et al 4 also critique the claim that esthetic knowing cannot be scientifically examined. They explicitly argue that "what Carper thought to be 'unknowable', the 'art of nursing' based on the complexity of practice, unexplainable reality, what some have labeled as intuition, is, at least in part, knowable."…”