Speaking of mistakes: A sociocultural account of learning to nurs

The purpose of this research project was to investigate how students learn to be nurses from a sociocultural perspective. This project's central questions have to do with how and what nursing students come to know, be, and do as they negotiate what may well be competing realities within the communities of professional nursing practice, and nursing education. Prompted by nursing students who indicated that making mistakes, and sharing these events with others, was one of the most important aspects in their development as nurses, the discourse of mistake-making in nursing education has been the focus of this investigation. A variety of texts were used to explore the discourse of mistake-making, most centrally, nursing students' practice journals, and transcripts of two focus group interviews. In addition, fieldnotes of post-practice seminars, and observations of actual nursing practice were also used as sources of information. The talk of mistake-making in these contexts was explored to see how that talk re/constructed the meaning of mistakes within the sometimes divergent communities of nursing education and professional nursing practice. Analysis of the discourse of mistake-making showed that nursing students use the genre of confession as a way to speak of their mistakes. By investigating the use of nursing students' "confessions" of mistakes in various contexts, over time, some conditions, functions, and consequences of such talk have been examined, and a trajectory of nursing development presented. Finally, some suggestions for alternative ways of speaking of mistakes in nursing education, based on the work of Francisco Ibanez (1997), have been suggested.