Chapter Questions
Discuss epistemic diversity and its potential outcomes on practice that is based on evidence (mostly defined from a received view and correspondence theory of truth).
Critically analyze the progress in the discipline of nursing within the different views of knowing. What criteria are you using to arrive at your conclusion?
Identify ways of knowing within your field of interest. Compare and contrast ways of knowing in your field of interest with those discussed in this chapter. In what ways are they different or similar, and why?
Which one of our discipline's epistemological traditions is likely to produce the evidence needed for quality care outcomes? Identify and define nursing discipline-driven quality care outcomes.
Compare and contrast the strengths of the different ways of knowing discussed in this chapter. What other approaches to knowing would you add to those discussed in this chapter?
Select one pattern of knowing and discuss how you would go about develop-ing a theoretical framework for a research question within your field of practice. What are the most significant properties that distinguish the process you have selected?
What are the weaknesses and strengths of each approach to truth discussed in this chapter?
Discuss some of the values nurse scientists hold that may support or negate each of the ways of knowing and models of truth discussed in this chapter.
In what ways do values about knowing in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, correspond or negate each way of knowing discussed in this chapter?
In what ways do major funding sources for nursing research shape patterns of knowing and models of truths in the discipline of nursing? Take a pro or con stand and defend it with evidence.
Discuss an Eastern philosophical way of knowing (e.g., Buddhism) and critically consider how it could enrich or constrain knowledge development in nursing.