(un) Disciplining thenursewriter: doctoral nursing students' perspective on writing capacity

Abstract

In this article, we offer a perspective into how Canadian doctoral nursing students' writing capacity is mentored and, as a result, we argue is disciplined. We do this by sharing our own disciplinary and interdisciplinary experiences of writing with, for and about nurses. We locate our experiences within a broader discourse that suggests doctoral (nursing) students be prepared as stewards of the (nursing) discipline. We draw attention to tensions and effects of writing within (nursing) disciplinary boundaries. We argue that traditional approaches to developing nurses' writing capacity in doctoral programs both shepherds and excludes emerging scholarly voices, and we present some examples to illustrate this dual role. We ask our nurse colleagues to consider for whom nurses write, offering an argument that nurses' writing must ultimately improve patient care and thus would benefit from multiple voices in writing.

Academic voice: On feminism, presence, and objectivity in writing

“…Voice is embedded in the social (Ivanič, ; Lea & Street, ; Paxton, ; Stock & Eik‐Nes, ), political (Leggatt‐Cook, ), gendered (Fleischman, ; Leggatt‐Cook, ), and cultural (Lea & Street, ; Stock & Eik‐Nes, ) milieu of power relations (Elbow, ; Fleischman, ; Paxton, ) present in academic writing. The objective rigidity of academic voice has its origins in the positivist traditions of science (Fleischman, ; Lillis & Turner, ; Ryan, Walker, Scaia, & Smith, ). While scholars argue that positivism is no longer relevant to postmodernist research and philosophy (Clark, ) and much of nursing science has evolved beyond positivism to postpositivist perspectives, the demand that scholars and students write in a colorless, turgid, passive, anonymous voice persists and bears consequences for students in higher education and the faculty who teach them.…”

“…The objective rigidity of academic voice has its origins in the positivist traditions of science (Fleischman, 1998;Lillis & Turner, 2001;Ryan, Walker, Scaia, & Smith, 2013). While scholars argue that positivism is no longer relevant to postmodernist research and philosophy (Clark, 1998) and much of nursing science has evolved beyond positivism to postpositivist perspectives, the demand that scholars and students write in a colorless, turgid, passive, anonymous voice persists and bears consequences for students in higher education and the faculty who teach them.…”

“…The linguistic practices of women are more reflexive, co-operative, and relational. The use of reflection in women's compositional writing is frequently proposed as a preference that allows women to connect with their ideas and knowledge more effectively (Easley, 1997;Fleischman, 1998;Leggatt-Cook, 2010;Meisenhelder, 1985;Ryan et al, 2013;Tengelin & Dahlborg-Lyckhage, 2017). The feminist goal is to redefine these acts of power and aggression in writing as empowerment and to emancipate rather than take control of others (Meisenhelder).…”

“…In contrast, writers at the level of doctoral education should be working to find their own voice (Ryan et al, 2013). Gimenez (2012) in exploring the writing of nursing and midwifery extends the idea of lack of teaching about academic voice to the teaching of all discipline-specific tacit knowledge, which is also not taught.…”

Constructing Writing Practices in Nursing

“…Disciplinary discourse perspectives of writing recognize that writers situate the language choices they make, their stance, and their knowledge within the tacit social context of their discipline (Hyland, 2004). However, generic instruction assumes the writing act is objective, formulistic, and positivist in nature (Gimenez, 2012;Mitchell, 2017;Webb, 1992)-a stance that Ryan, Walker, Scaia, and Smith (2014) referred to as insular, and which is also incongruent with the nursing value of relationality. Positivism, as applied to academic writing, assumes that it is possible for the author to separate themselves from past experience, emotional response to the content, and the context in which the writing takes place.…”