process that aims to encourage the development of virtue (including most importantly
phronesis) must also aim to work towards instilling in the student an understanding of
the intimate relationship between the universals and the particulars in a practice-based
discipline such as nursing. While knowledge of the universals (propositional
knowledge) is necessary for safe and competence practice, propositional knowledge on
its own will not make for good practice in relation to a particular patient in a particular
situation at a particular time. Similarly, effective practical technique or mere task
competence without some sort of underpinning propositional knowledge is an
impoverished and undesirable basis for nursing practice. This is something Florence
Nightingale understood as witnessed by her recognition that nurses should not merely
act from unthinking obedience despite her general requirement that nurses obey doctors’
orders (1952 edn). Although she insisted on training for probationers (student nurses
would be the nearest modem equivalent), Nightingale was very clear that nurses needed
to develop a great deal of practical wisdom if they were to make a positive difference
for the patients in their care. In part, her use of the word training reflects both the social
and language conventions of the day and should not lead us to suppose that she
necessarily meant by it what we would understand by it today. Nevertheless, this
recognition of the necessity to understand the close relationship between what we now
tend to classify as propositional and practical knowledge in practice-based occupations
such as nursing is an essential part of engaging with nursing as a practice. Indeed, one
feature of understanding nursing as a practice is that it provides a logical way of
understanding knowledge in a less polarised fashion. As well as enabling us to situate
the values inherent in theoretical knowledge within a framework of the traditions of a
practice, a practice allows us to overcome the overly simplistic idea that practical
nursing knowledge is merely the application of scientific propositional knowledge in
practical situations. As such, nursing (like any other practice) provides a way in which
the world of the universals (the academy) and the world of the particulars (clinical
practice) can move closer together. This need not be in any physical sense although that
is not precluded; rather it is a closeness that permeates the work of both. And it is not
merely that each should recognise the contribution of the other; rather it is the
recognition that each is engaged in only one part of a much larger enterprise.
Teachingfor intellectual virtue
In his 1999 paper, Dunne is self-consciously attempting to fathom how we might, as
teachers, use Aristotelian habituation to encourage others to cultivate moral virtue. But
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