The curriculum, the foundation of the educa-
tion program, asserts the focus and domain of
nursing as nurturing persons living caring and
growing in caring:
The model for organizational design of nursing edu-
cation is analogous to the dancing circle....Members
of the circle include administrators, faculty, col-
leagues, students, staff, community, and the nursed.
What this circle represents is the commitment of each
dancer to understand and support the study of the
discipline of nursing. The role of education adminis-
trators in the circle, represented by deans and depart-
ment chairpersons is more clearly understood when
the origin of the word is reflected upon. The term
“administrator” derives from the Latin ad ministrare,
to serve (according to Webster’s, cited in Guralnik,
1976). This definition connotes the idea of rendering
service. Administrators within the circle are by nature
of [their] role obligated to ministering, to securing,
and to providing resources needed by faculty, stu-
dents, and staff to meet program objectives. Faculty,
students, and administrators dance together in the
study of nursing. Faculty support an environment
that values the uniqueness of each person and sus-
tains each person’s unique way of living and growing
in caring. This process requires trust, hope, courage,
and patience. Because the purpose of nursing educa-
tion is to study the discipline and practice of nursing,
the nursed must be in the circle, and the focus of
study must be the nursing situation, the shared lived
experience of caring between nurse and nursed and
all those who participate in the dance of caring per-
sons. The community created is that of persons living
caring in the moment and growing in personhood,
each person valued as special and unique. (Boykin &
Schoenhofer, 1993, pp. 73–74)
In teaching nursing as caring, faculty assist stu-
dents to come to know, appreciate, and celebrate
both self and other as caring persons. Students, as
well as faculty, are in a continual search to discover
greater meaning of caring as uniquely expressed in
nursing. Examples of a nursing education program
based on values similar to those of nursing as car-
ing are illustrated in the book Living a Caring-based
Program(Boykin, 1994).
Mentoring students as colearners and creating
caring learning environments while concomitantly
accepting responsibility for summative evaluation
calls for the integrated foundation provided by the
guiding intention to know and nurture persons as
caring. This intention helps the nurse to transcend
limiting historical practices while creatively invent-
ing ways to inspire. The humility of unknowing,
joined with courage and hope, helps the nurse edu-
cator to guide the study of nursing as a commit-
ment to knowing and nurturing persons as caring.
Many nurse educators are struck with the incon-
gruity of instilling a commitment to nursing as an
opportunity to care through means that seem to
view the student as an object and view the disci-
pline as a preexisting set of operating rules. Nursing
education practiced from the perspective of nurs-
ing as caring opens the way for faculty to truly
value the discipline and the student.NURSING AS CARING IN RESEARCH
AND DEVELOPMENT
The roles of researcher and developer in nursing
take on a particular focus when guided by the the-
ory of nursing as caring. The assumptions and
focus of nursing explicated in the theory provide an
organizing value system that suggests certain key
questions and methods. Research questions lead to
exploration and illumination of patterns of
living caring personally (Schoenhofer, Bingham,
& Hutchins, 1998) and in nursing practice
(Schoenhofer & Boykin, 1998b). Dialogue, descrip-
tion, and innovations in interpretative approaches
characterize research methods. Development of
systems and structures (e.g., policy formulation, in-
formation management, nursing delivery, and re-
imbursement) to support nursing necessitates
sustained efforts in reframing and refocusing famil-
iar systems as well as creating novel configurations
(Schoenhofer, 1995; Schoenhofer & Boykin, 1998a).
Nurses in research and development roles carry
out their work facing environmental pressures
similar to those experienced by the practitioner,
the administrator, and the educator. Research
and development in nursing require disciplinary-
congruent values and perspectives, free-ranging
thought, openness, and creativity. Institutional sys-
tems and structures often seem to favor values and
practices that are incongruent with the values of
the nursing discipline, in their overly patterned
thought, rigidity, and conformity. Researchers and
developers guided by the assumptions and themes
of nursing as caring are empowered to create novel
methods in the search for understanding and mean-
ing and to articulate effectively the value, purpose,
and relevance of their work (Schoenhofer, 2002).CHAPTER 21 Anne Boykin and Savina O. Schoenhofer’s Nursing as Caring Theory 341