title: Discourses with potential to disrupt traditional nursing education: Nursing teachers' talk about norm-critical competence.
abstract: This paper describes the discourses underlying nursing teachers' talk about their own norm-critical competence. Norm criticism is an approach that promotes awareness and criticism of the norms and power structures that exert an excluding effect in society in general and in the healthcare encounter in particular. Given the unequal relationships that can exist in healthcare, for example relationships shaped by racism, sexism and classism, a norm-critical approach to nursing education would help illuminate these matters. The studied empirical material consisted of focus group interviews. Nursing teachers discussed their norm-critical competence based on the university course "Norm-Aware Caring" in which they had recently participated. Through a critical discourse analysis, three discourses were identified in their talk, all of which had the potential to disrupt traditional, normative nursing education. However, in all three discourses there was an underlying discourse of normality, clearly positioning the teachers as exemplifying the "normal." The binary constructed between normality and otherness contradicts a basic tenet of the norm-critical approach and may hamper the development of genuine norm-critical competence in nursing education.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences; University West, Trollhättan, Sweden.|School of Health and Welfare; Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Ellinor
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tengelin
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences; University West, Trollhättan, Sweden.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dahlborg-Lyckhage
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; D005181:Faculty, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D000072339:Sexual and Gender Minorities / Q000523:psychology; D066262:Social Norms
keywords: competence; critical discourse analysis; focus groups; healthcare disparities; norm criticism; nursing education; social norms