Open Collections

Rampersaud, Patricia Ratnee

University of British Columbia

A major change in Canadian nursing educational policy occurred in 2015 with the adoption of the NCLEX-RN® exam as Canada’s new registration exam for baccalaureate nursing graduates. The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the pressures the NCLEX-RN® exam exerted on Schools of Nursing, nursing educators, and nursing administrators, and how educational performance accountability changed the practice and values of the Canadian nursing profession. How did the NCLEX-RN® exam position and affect Canadian Schools of Nursing, nursing administrators, and educators? In what ways did participants adapt or resist these changes? Whose, or which, interests were served through the adoption of the exam? The research was conducted through the complementary qualitative research approaches of critical policy analysis and focused ethnography. Research methods included participant observations, interviews, and document analyses. Twelve educators and administrators from four Schools of Nursing in British Columbia participated in the study. Data were analyzed in relation to neo-liberalism, governmentality, power, and globalization. Data generation and findings were discussed through four major categories namely regulation, curriculum, performativity, and resistance. Findings supported arguments that nursing regulation was influenced by globalization and neo-liberalism, and that British Columbian nursing education was influenced by quasi-marketization. Many Schools of Nursing adopted curriculum products emanating from private-public sectors. Curriculums, evaluation assessments, and teacher content were being aligned to the NCLEX-RN® exam. Certain content, relevant to the Canadian nursing context, were less emphasized, or discussed as ‘subjugated’. Canadian nursing education was being retooled away from concerns for the public good and towards the production of human capital. Findings illustrated that Schools of Nursing, nursing educators, and administrators, were being reshaped toward the values and technologies of educational performativity. Participants described “teaching to the test”, decrease teaching autonomy, a range of emotions, and a sense of insecurity as they questioned the meaning and importance of their roles as educators or administrators. Resistance took many forms including the generation of organizational fabrications which portrayed a constructive view of their program or of themselves. Participants, through resistance and fabrications, exerted their own power to alter the power relations that were already at play.

Text

2022-08-23

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82453

Educational Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/