Learning to walk the talk. Critical reflections on curriculum development at Whitirea Community Polytechnic 1985-93 

Preamble
This paper sets out to critically reflect on the journey that curriculum development has travelled from the beginning of the Diploma in Nursing at Whitireia Community Polytechnic in 1985 up to the development of the new curriculum in 1993.  It is our belief that the full importance of our emerging curriculum philosophy can only be realised when the context from which it has emerged has been made explicit.  The use of critical reflection to surface this story is particularly congruent with nursing practice because it takes the form of a narrative which, as Benner and Wrubel (1989), Zerwekh (1989), and Street (1991), for example have argued is a well developed tradition within nursing.  This approach makes no pretence of representing an ‘objective’ view of history, but rather a view of events which give meaning and significance to the social actors involved.