Story as text for undergraduate curriculum

A baccalaureate maternity nursing course was transformed from a behaviorist, content-driven curriculum to one of critical dialogue centering upon ethics of care. The inclusion of required readings from a collection of short stories, Birth Stories by Jane Dwinell, RN (1992), served as the primary catalyst in changing faculty and student's curricular experiences. How the class transformed from lecture/discussion format to dialogue is presented around Freire's writings on the dialogic class and Doll's postmodern curriculum perspectives. Student reactions and clinical implications are described. Recommendations for future applications of story in the dialogic classroom is explored.