Humanist ideologyand nurse education. 2. Limitations of humanist educational theory in nurse education

This article questions the viability of humanist educational theory in nurse education and raises the issue of which interests are served by humanist ideology. The limitations of the humanist approach are traced. Self-directed learning is shown to be problematic in nurse education, leading to tensions between independent learning and required course content, and the appropriateness of student-centred learning to the professional education of nurses is queried. The need to produce safe practitioners compromises the humanist model. Lifelong learning, for example, becomes institutionalized, and its self-directed character transformed into a mandatory process of lifelong professional education. The humanist model has become the new orthodoxy in nurse education and operates as a form of social control. Through its individualism the approach supports a competency model, which in turn restricts the potential diversity of ‘product’. This individualistic bias denies the social reality of nursing and fails to empower the nurse by emphasizing individual growth at the expense of social learning. The article concludes that humanist ideology serves the needs of a free-market philosophy. If nurse education is to be challenging it must break with individualism and seek to develop a different rationale, that of a collectivist ideology.