title: Pedagogy as influencing nursing students' essentialized understanding of culture.
abstract: In this qualitative study, we explored how students understood "culture." Participants defined culture and wrote narratives regarding specific cultural encounters. The sample comprised both nursing (n=14) and non-nursing (n=8) students to allow for comparison groups. Content analysis of the narratives revealed two broad paradigms of cultural understanding: essentialist and constructivist. Essentialist narratives comprised four themes: determinism (culture defied individual resistance); relativism (the possibility of making value judgments disappeared); Othering (culture was equated to exotica, and emphasized difference); and, reductionism (personhood was eclipsed by culture). In contrast, the constructivist narratives were characterized by influence (non-determinism), dynamism (culture was dynamic and evolutionary); and, relationship-building. The unintended negative consequences of essentialist notions of culture were revealed in the nursing students' narratives. Pedagogy is implicated in nursing students' essentialized understanding of culture.
authors.affiliation: University of Lethbridge, Canada. david.gregory@uleth.ca
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gregory
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harrowing
authors.forename: Bonnie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Doolittle
authors.forename: Patrick S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: O'Sullivan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D054521:Cultural Competency; D003469:Culture; D004506:Education, Nursing; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000941:ethics / Q000592:standards*; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D011287:Prejudice; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D013663:Teaching; D055815:Young Adult