Nurse Education Tomorrow Conference 1990. Reforming nurse education. 1--The reorganisation of nursing knowledge.

With the development of Project 2000, nurse education is being increasingly drawn into higher education with the expansion of diploma and degree courses. This paper explores the implications of these new relationships, drawing on the sociology of the curriculum and education in its analyses. It examines the impact of these changes on the professional standing of nurses and nursing and the reorganisation of the curricular codes that underpin nurse education. A movement towards higher education will introduce a new educational culture into nurse training and the wide multi-disciplinary base of nursing knowledge and practice will offer new challenges to nurse educators. The changes in nurse education add a new dynamic to the old tensions between academic and vocational training and raise new questions about the relationship of nurse education to the academic tribalism of higher education.