Enlightenment, empowerment and emancipation: the case for critical pedagogy in nurse education

This paper explores the notion that nurse education is a political activity which is value laden and has multiple social meaning. As long as teachers continue to pursue liberal and andragogical theories of learning, students will fail to develop a critical consciousness. The implications are vast as nursing prepares to enter the next millennium: notions such as the reflective practitioner and the knowledgeable doer feature highly on the profession's educational agenda, both of which implicitly require critical thinking skills. By using Habermas' definition of 'critique' as a framework and Paulo Freire's concept of 'conscientisation' as an educational model, it is argued that nurse teachers can expose the oppressive structures which confine and limit the nursing experience. Only then, when our oppression, both as women and nurses has been recognised, and a critical consciousness achieved, can true humanistic care be given. Through the development of emancipatory nursing actions can the profession stop colluding with the social structures which keep many people and groups in oppressive conditions. We should, in short, be teaching for 'peaceful revolution'.