THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES AND NURSING EDUCATION: SOME PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS.

A basic task of every occupation calling itself a profession is educating and indoctrinating recruits into its culture. The study of this process, its changes, and consequences is a major interest of the sociology of the professions. One purpose of this article is to describe selected aspects of changes in nursing education with particular attention to collegiate nursing education and to nursing's interest in research. Nursing's effort to improve its services and professional status over the past two or three decades constitutes an area of social and educational change that is increasingly involving the behavioral sciences. These disciplines are part and parcel of the change and, at the same time, the changes are a legitimate object of study for them. A second purpose of this paper, then, is to examine features of this dual involvement and to suggest a few research possibilities in nursing. Nursing, one of the newer professions and still uncertain about its professional status, finds itself confronted with a number of problems generally characteristic of all professions and others unique to nursing.