Rebekah Sexton
Mentors: Drs. Nancy Barnum and Susan Dunn
Department of Nursing
Social and Cultural Trends and their Influence on Nursing Education
During the 20th century, nursing education was formalized within academic
circles. Many social and cultural issues, such as race, gender and socio-
economic status, greatly impacted this transformation. The focus of this research
project was to gain a better understanding of how these issues have influenced
nursing education. A framework proposed by Foucault explores the relationship
between human experiences, knowledge and power. Specifically the idea of
eventualization, or the analysis of what conditions have led to the development of
an event, was used. A literature review of several nursing and professional
journals was conducted along with a number of research-based books focused
on several topics. These topics included feminism as well as race and socio-
economic relations. This was a retrospective, qualitative study. At this point, this
study has revealed that the advancement of nursing education was heavily
influenced by many social and cultural trends. These trends included issues such
as the feminist and civil-rights movements. The advancement of this research
would allow past patterns to be understood, giving insight into what future
patterns in nursing education might be. Limitations of this project include the
short time span during which research was done, access to available databases
and limited primary sources.