Abstract

Purpose. The purposes of this dissertation are three: to develop new knowledge and understanding related to the knowledge structure of nursing; to describe a postmodern approach to theory construction, and to present the initial development toward The Theory of Artful Becoming. ;The nature of the inquiry. The nature of this inquiry is an exploration regarding the focus and domain of nursing, human being and becoming, ways of knowing, and contemporary methods of theory construction. Three levels of questioning guided the exploration and understanding of the philosophic and theoretical perspectives of the inquiry. ;Inquiry methods. This inquiry was initiated through an endeavor of theory derivation, a process of theory development described by Walker and Avant . The philosophy of John Dewey's Art as Experience, was utilized to inform an aesthetic view of person in the description of an artful way of human coming into being. The work then moves beyond theory derivation method into the development of an interpretive-dialectic-constructive process for building theory and utilizes a Ricoeurean hermeneutic approach to facilitate the course in the development of the Theory of Artful Becoming. This theory building process also uses methods of appropriation with the text of Dewey's aesthetic philosophy in selecting text for transformation into the composition of a descriptive theory of artful becoming. ;Contribution. This theory development work contributes to nursing's body of scholarship by offering a new way of re-visioning the structure of nursing' s metaparadigm through the integration of caring as the essential focus of nursing and through the aesthetic conceptualization of Person; by offering a contemporary postmodern method for theory construction through the explication of an intertextual-interpretive-transformative method; and by the initial development of The Theory of Artful Becoming. This theory of person posits elements present in artful as well as non-artful becoming and describes a self-aware contextual process of human being-in-the-world. A description of a process of artful becoming can provide an understanding of essential elements to the event and may, thereby, allow for the development of ways to facilitate the process of artful becoming, which has the potential to impact ways of nursing education and practice