The Rhetoric of Information Learning in Nursing: Where is Knowledge?

Abstract

In neoliberal western societies, the demise of knowledge as a domain for broad-based independent thinking, critique, and action is directly related to the increasing association of information learning with political and economic rationalities. In this context, autonomous knowledge is reduced or replaced by information learning that is inextricably linked to pragmatic agendas and policies of markets or sovereign states. The new mantra accorded information learning is perpetual lifelong learning which can be characterized as narrow in scope and specific to retooling to meet the demands of ever-changing neoliberal agendas. The sense of the academy, as the arbitrator of epistemology, the historical guardian, generator, and facilitator of independent knowledge, is lost or severely restricted. My objective is to raise awareness of the insidious substitution of knowledge for information learning in the discipline of nursing that has developed primarily from increasing neoliberal realities over the course of the past thirty years.