In 1978, Barbara Carper published the article titled “Fundamental Patterns of Knowing in Nursing”. In this article, now a classic publication with a profound effect on the discipline, Carper identified four patterns of knowing: empirical, personal, ethical, and aesthetic. This section of Nursology.net provides an overview of these four patterns of knowing, along with additional knowing patterns that inform the development and practice of nursology .
Source: Fundamental Patterns of Knowing as depicted in Chinn, P. L., Kramer, M. & Sitzman, K. (2022). Knowledge Development in Nursing: Theory and Process (11th ed.). Elsevier. Used by permission.
Carper’s article was published at a time when nursologists were focused on developing quantitative research methods. Yet, at the same time, they recognized that many problems in nursing defied quantitative study. The notion that nursing requires patterns of knowing, different from empirics, that more adequately address the range of concerns nurses encounter in practice and how they understand them, was a welcome advance in understanding the nature of nursology.
Subsequently, Chinn and Kramer, over 11 editions of Knowledge Development in Nursing, extended Carper’s initial work on the patterns of knowing in nursing. For each pattern, they added critical questions, creative inquiry processes, formal expressions, and means of authenticating knowledge. They also provided diagrams of the patterns that evolved as understanding of the patterns evolved and depicted dynamic interaction among them. Chinn and Kramer later introduced and described the concept of nursing praxis, expert practice that integrates all patterns of knowing; and, in 2010, introduced a fifth pattern – emancipatory knowing. This pattern, depicted as central to the other four patterns, was based on the growing body of literature addressing knowledge required to make cultural, social and political change that is required to improve health and health care.
The concept of emancipatory knowing is closely aligned with the concept introduced by Jill White – sociopolitical knowing, which focuses more specifically on the context of nursing and those who influence it. The concept of emancipatory knowing shares this focus but also focuses on critical dynamics of power that reveal inequities and disadvantages.
Source: Fundamental Patterns of Knowing as depicted in Chinn, P. L., Kramer, M., & Sitzman, K. (2022). Knowledge Development in Nursing: Theory and Process (11th ed.). Elsevier. Used by permission.
