Abstract
Inquiring into the theoretical underpinnings of dietetic curriculum provides a means for further understanding who dietitians are (identity) and what dietitians do (performativity). Since dietetic curriculum exists as a structural influence on the dietetic student identity, it is worth inquiring into how such a structure is theoretically informed, especially considering that until now, this process has not be undertaken. This research attempts to illuminate how dietetic knowledge is generated and how various institutional structures reinforce this knowledge. Since dietetic education in Canada is standardized by a means of national accreditation, the accreditation texts were analyzed following a poststructural discourse analysis method. Those aspects of the Accreditation Manual concerning dietetic education were scrutinized to illuminate the presence/absence of curricular theory, knowledge assumptions, and educational values. Findings of the discourse analysis indicate that there is no explicit curricular theory framing dietetic education, learning processes are sequential and apolitical, and dietetic knowledge is decontextualized from the social world. These findings have implications for dietetic education, the scholarship of teaching and learning within the profession, and dietetic epistemology. With further attention to these issues it is hoped that dietetic educators will be encouraged to reflect on the historical and theoretical foundations of their curricula and will consider how teaching and learning, and ultimately dietetic knowledge could be enhanced through a socially integrated feminist science of food and nutrition.
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Notes
Curriculum as defined by dietetic educators is an educational plan which includes content, instructional methods, and evaluation measures (Accreditation Committee 1998).
Dietetic epistemology as used here is defined as the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of nutrition knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity.
See Barthes (1974) for his description of the “readerly text,” which highlights the subtle interactions among reading the text, and the reader.
Power (2005) describes reflexivity as understanding “how your social position (a product of income, education, gender, profession, etc.) and the power and privilege that accompany being a health professional affect your opinions, everyday practices, and perspectives on the world” (p. 46).
The interactionist model of document production (content analysis) is elaborated upon in Manning and Cullum-Swan 1994, p. 468.
Additional discourses of interest appear in the Manual outside the “curriculum” grouping, but still within the “accreditation standards” category.
The DC mission statement reads: DC leads and supports members to promote health and well being through expertise in food and nutrition. More specifically, Dietitians of Canada is the “voice of the profession.”
Hafferty (2000) concludes it is the rise of the technician that is under attack (in crisis) since the professional-as-technician is unable to address larger social transformation by stifling the moral imagination. Richardson (1997) describes the crises as uncertainty about what constitutes adequate depiction of social reality.
Positivism is a philosophical movement that holds that all meaningful statements are conclusively verifiable observation and experiment and that metaphysical theories are therefore strictly meaningless. Positivism is a philosophical orientation that considers theoretical knowledge as value-free, objective, and unrelated to practice. The positivistic tradition is historically associated with scientific processes and technical rationality (Vaines 1997).
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Financial support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Killam Foundation.
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Gingras, J. The educational (im)possibility for dietetics: a poststructural discourse analysis. Learn Inq 3, 177–191 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-009-0044-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-009-0044-x