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Gary Rolfe

Publications and source records attributed to Gary Rolfe.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Education, philosophy and academic practice: nursing studies in the posthistorical university.

This paper is an amended and abridged version of a seminar given at the NET/NEP 1st Nurse Education International Conference in Vancouver, Canada. The topic of the paper arose from our growing concerns about the state of nurse education and its position in the university at the start of the twenty-first century. We share the fears expressed by Readings that the university has lost its way and is increasingly driven by a business agenda and a quest for ever-greater efficiency. Our biggest concern is with the impact that the so-called 'posthistorical university' is having on the study of nursing, particularly the growing pressure on nurse academics to focus their attention and energy on output at the expense of process, and on research at the expense of practice and practitioner development. We suggest that the solution might lie with Jean-Francois Lyotard's notion of postmodern philosophy as a way of opening up debate and, in his words, saving the honour of thinking.

Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate↗
PubMed2006

Validity, trustworthiness and rigour: quality and the idea of qualitative research.

AIM: In this paper, I call into question the widely-held assumption of a single, more or less unified paradigm of 'qualitative research' whose methodologies share certain epistemological and ontological characteristics, and explore the implications of this position for judgements about the quality of research studies. BACKGROUND: After a quarter of a century of debate in nursing about how best to judge the quality of qualitative research, we appear to be no closer to a consensus, or even to deciding whether it is appropriate to try to achieve a consensus. The literature on this issue can be broadly divided into three positions: those writers who wish qualitative research to be judged according to the same criteria as quantitative research; those who believe that a different set of criteria is required; and those who question the appropriateness of any predetermined criteria for judging qualitative research. Of the three positions, the second appears to have generated most debate, and a number of different frameworks and guidelines for judging the quality of qualitative research have been devised over recent years. DISCUSSION: The second of the above positions is rejected in favour of the third. It argues that, if there is no unified qualitative research paradigm, then it makes little sense to attempt to establish a set of generic criteria for making quality judgements about qualitative research studies. We need either to acknowledge that the commonly perceived quantitative-qualitative dichotomy is in fact a continuum which requires a continuum of quality criteria, or to recognize that each study is individual and unique, and that the task of producing frameworks and predetermined criteria for assessing the quality of research studies is futile. CONCLUSION: Some of the implications of this latter position are explored, including the requirement that all published research reports should include a reflexive research diary.

Data Collection↗
PubMed2006

'Do not ask who I am...': confession, emancipation and (self)-management through reflection.

AIM: This study explores and extends some recent Foucauldian critiques of reflection and clinical supervision in nursing. BACKGROUND: Although reflection is often accepted uncritically, several writers have claimed that it is being employed (albeit perhaps unwittingly) as a management tool to facilitate the governmentality of the workforce by establishing conditions whereby so-called reflective practitioners monitor and regulate their own practice in an essentially self-repressive way. EVALUATION/EXAMINATION: We evaluated these critiques and extended them with reference to Foucault's later writing, particularly on the 'care of self'. KEY ISSUES AND CONCLUSIONS: Our exploration of these critiques prompted us to distinguish between two different projects of reflection, which we term the ontological and the epistemological. The ontological project regards the aim of reflection as personal growth under the direction of an enlightened guide, and we argue that there is a real danger that such an approach might degenerate into what one critic has termed 'a subtle but persuasive exercise of power'. The epistemological project, on the other hand, is concerned with an exploration by practitioners of their own methods of thinking about their practice, and as such, has the potential to become truly emancipatory.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2006

Judgements without rules: towards a postmodern ironist concept of research validity.

The past decade has seen the gradual emergence of what might be called a postmodern perspective on nursing research. However, the development of a coherent postmodern critique of the modernist position has been hampered by some misunderstandings and misrepresentations of postmodern epistemology by a number of writers, leading to a fractured and distorted view of postmodern nursing research. This paper seeks to distinguish between judgemental relativist and epistemic relativist or ironist positions, and regards the latter as offering the most coherent critique of modernist/(post)positivist nursing research. The writings of poststructuralist philosophers, including Barthes, Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault and Rorty are examined, and a number of criteria for a postmodern ironist concept of research validity or trustworthiness are suggested. Whilst these writers reject the idea of Method as a guarantee of valid research, they nevertheless believe that value judgements can and must be made, and turn to notions of ironism, différance, and the different. Ultimately, the postmodern ironist reader of the research report must make a judgement without criteria, based on her own practical wisdom or 'prudence'.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed2005

Towards a geology of evidence-based practice--a discussion paper.

We begin this paper with a consideration of the significance of a historical perspective in presentations of evidence-based practice in the nursing and medical literature. We suggest that whereas writers often produce coherent historical narratives as justification for particular views of the nature of EBP, an examination of its origins reveals no such signs of historical development or progress in our conception or understanding of it. We then explore alternative modes of thought for attempting to understand and critique the variety of definitions and descriptions of EBP to be found in the literature. We eventually reject the linear mode of historical thinking in favour of Deleuze's notion of rhizomatic thought and the metaphor of geology. Finally, we employ the rhizomatic mode of thinking and writing to construct a geology of evidence-based practice which attempts to expose and embrace contradictions in definitions and uses of the term rather than discount them in an authorised historical narrative written from the perspective of the dominant discourse.

Benchmarking↗
PubMed2005

'To save the honour of thinking': a slightly petulant response to Griffiths.

This is a response (a reply? a riposte?) to Peter Griffiths (Int. J. Nurs. Stud., in press, ) that attempts to answer some of the charges, which he levels at our book 'Deconstructing Evidence-based Practice' (Routledge, London, 2004). It begins by countering Griffiths' mistaken assertion that, in deconstruction, 'anything goes'. It argues that Griffiths is wrong because he has literally mistaken the meanings of certain words; that is, he has taken them wrongly. His biggest mistake, on which all of his others rests, is to mistake the word 'deconstruction' to imply a form of extreme relativism in which there are no right or wrong readings. In this, he is simply wrong. He is wrong in his assumption that there are no wrong readings, and the fact (yes, fact) that he is wrong demonstrates that some readings can be wrong. In particular, he mistakes the word 'challenge' to mean 'deny', and the word 'authority' to mean 'legitimacy'. This is not simply our reading of what we took him to mean (which could, by our own argument, be mistaken). It is his reading and his writing, there on the page in black and white. And this misreading, this mistake, inevitably leads him to a wrong conclusion. Having clarified the small matter that, in deconstruction, anything does not go, and that deconstructionists are not constrained to accept everything that is written about them, we then attempt to point out some other mistakes in Griffiths' non-review. Most importantly, we reject Griffiths' accusation that postmodernism is a strategy to 'save us from thinking' and instead, with Lyotard, advocate it as an attempt 'to save the honour of thinking'.

Evidence-Based Medicine↗
PubMed2005

Core elements of programmatic research in nursing: a case study.

In this invited paper Tina Koch and Debbie Kralik present the establishment of a research program outside the precincts of a university and we ask Gary Rolfe to provide a commentary from the perspective of an academic. We argue that a dedicated research unit, with a clearly articulated philosophy and in response to research questions from clients, community and practitioners, provides the focus to drive the program. Although we have infrastructure from the RDNS Foundation, obtaining external funding to support our program is a central activity. Discernable outcomes of our collaborative inquiries are described as participants with whom we research narrate aspects of their experience, leading to enhancement of self agency and quality of life. We illustrate the reform potential as groups of research participants develop sustainable people networks. Most importantly, theoretical development is ongoing describing transition (ways in which people are able to take a chronic illness into their lives and move on) and better understanding on ways in which health care professionals can facilitate transition. Evidence based news letters are written in collaboration with practitioners, however we ponder about ways to further our research findings in practice. Gary Rolfe speculates about intermural or extramural research programs. He frames his response using Brand's criteria to research program decisions. In order of importance he asks: (1) will it be fun? (2) will we learn anything from it? (3) will it make the world a better place? (4) will it earn enough money to pay for the first three? Gary argues that one of the luxuries of working within the university sector as an academic is that he can occasionally ignore question four.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

The deconstructing angel: nursing, reflection and evidence-based practice.

This paper explores Jacques Derrida's strategy of deconstruction as a way of understanding and critiquing nursing theory and practice. Deconstruction has its origins in philosophy, but I argue that it is useful and relevant as a way of challenging the dominant paradigm of any discipline, including nursing. Because deconstruction is notoriously difficult to define, I offer a number of examples of deconstruction in action. In particular, I focus on three critiques of reflective practice by the meta-narrative of evidence-based practice (EBP) and attempt to show how those critiques can be directed back at EBP itself. I conclude with the observation that EBP is open to many of the criticisms that it directs at other discourses, including problems of a lack of empirical evidence, of distortions due to memory, and of falsification of the 'facts'.

Anecdotes as Topic↗
PubMed2002

Faking a difference: evidence-based nursing and the illusion of diversity.

Whilst it is desirable for the dominant paradigm (discourse) in any discipline to be seen to be encouraging diversity, I will argue in this paper that the result of real diversity is to decentralize power and strengthen the challenges to that discourse. It is therefore in the interests of the dominant discourse (if it wishes to remain dominant) to act to neutralize the power of its competitors by forcing them to conform to the rules of the dominant discourse. In this way, the illusion of diversity is maintained, but its power for radical change is greatly diluted. In deconstructing some of the most influential 'texts' (in the broader sense of the term) of evidence-based nursing, I have attempted to show that the usual way of divesting competing discourses of their power is through an assimilation into the dominant discourse in the name of diversity. However, such assimilation is, in reality, more akin to an aggressive takeover bid which maintains the rules, values and culture of the dominant discourse. For example, when qualitative bids for research funding are judged according to the rules of quantitative research, that is, according to their generalizability, sample size, and so on, the outcome is inevitably to their disadvantage. Simply by agreeing to play, any competing discourse accepts the rules of the game that are designed to deny fair competition. The rhetoric of diversity therefore masks a strategy for maintaining power which can only be challenged by (Lyotard's notion of) the philosopher, who attempts to expose the inequality inherent in it.

Evidence-Based Medicine↗
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Humans↗