Preserving reading, writing, thinking, and dialogue: Rethinking doctoral education in nursing

Doctoral education in nursing is in a vortex of challenges and possibilities. Diminishing economic resources for schooling and research, faculty reductions, increasing numbers of part time students, and a widening demand for substantive research have escalated the complexities of teaching and learning scholarship. The conventional approach to learning as cognitive gain, the focus on efficiency and effectiveness, the primacy of theoretical knowledge, and the expectation for "outcome" measurement and evaluation have served the discipline well. However, this approach also precludes new possibilities for doctoral education.;The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the common practices and shared lived experiences of nurses who are students or teachers in conventional doctoral education. By analyzing these common practices, I created an interpretive pedagogy and illuminated new possibilities for learning scholarship and rethinking doctoral education. Participants recruited from across the United States included 30 nurses, both students and teachers. Data I collected from extended, non-structured interviews were analyzed hermeneutically using the interpretive phenomenology of Heidegger and Gadamer as the philosophical background. With the assistance of a research team, I analyzed data to identify themes emerging from across interview texts and a pattern expressing the relationship among themes.;Three themes: Becoming a Scholar: Preserving Writing; Becoming a Scholar: Preserving Reading; and Becoming a Scholar: Preserving Dialogue emerged during this inquiry. A pattern arising from this analysis, Preserving Reading, Writing, Thinking, and Dialogue: Doing the Dissertation describes how teachers and students gather to sustain reading, writing, thinking, and dialogue as inseparable practices of scholarship. That is, the analysis of these data revealed that the language, skills, and practices of scholarship are dialogical in that they reflect the "play" of reading, writing, thinking, and dialogue. This study reveals new understandings of "what works" and "what doesn't," which experiences and common practices in contemporary doctoral education are (and are not) meaningful, and how these practices can be nurtured and sustained in contemporary scholarship. These common experiences and practices offer students and teachers a way to rethink doctoral education and include critical, feminist, postmodern, and phenomenological approaches to schooling toward transforming doctoral education in nursing.