Gender models role models and cognitive models... Discuss?

As a male nurse I have been aware of gender throughout my career ever since my student days (late 1970s-early 80s) - mental health - and then as a student again for two years general nurse training. The cultural, professional and global changes over the past three decades and more have been quite profound all influencing the perspectives and realities of gender in nursing today.

Since 1987-88, when I discovered Hodges' model I was also bound to wonder about gender in terms of:

• the number of male nurse theorists and their contribution (should this matter!)?; 
• other male nurse theorists globally and the influence of other cultural perspectives;
• the need to consider gender of course in terms of 'standpoint' within research;
• Is Hodges' model gender biased as its structure and basis comprised of categories of care concepts is a very masculine activity? (Even though the intention in identifying the boxes is to transcend and integrate them.) Please see below (and no pun intended).
• Therefore nursing (still primarily a female profession) may ignore/discredit the potential of the model?

Possibly, the stand-out feature of Hodges' model is its invitation to categorise and typify. There could be gender-based consequences in how the model is perceived and received, which in turn could affect interest and participation in research on this subject? In designing studies of the model the feminist standpoint might be useful?:

“What, then, about the further charge that making clear-cut classifications of this kind is a very masculine thing to do? … It reaches its peak in empirical science as we know it, itself a very male affair, and it embodies the desire to have control of things and to know what is likely to happen. It issues in the kind of binary opposites we have found feminists, especially postmodernist feminists, decrying so vigorously-antimonies such as thought/language, nature/culture, reason/emotion, theory/practice, white/black, and especially men/women.” Crotty, (1998) p.171.

Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. SAGE Publications Ltd.

This post was prompted by an item on GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery)

Book: Thinking as Communicating - Sfard (the intra- interpersonal domain)

Previously I wondered about a term that might combine thinking and the formation and process of mental mapping, the creation of a conceptual map - a mental conceptual geography - cogneography?

Thinking as Communicating

Finding Anna Sfard's 1998 paper this past week led me to her book. The following is from the introduction:

I define thinking as individualized form of interpersonal communication. The disappearance of the time-honored dichotomy is epitomized in the term commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication, with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference, may be the primary source of humans’ unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another.

Sfard's work will have to go on the 'to read' pile (part-time studies begin tomorrow), but it may help provide ways to understand and unravel the intra- and interpersonal domain within Hodges' model. The mathematical emphasis (even though I may struggle with this) is an added bonus.

Sfard, A. Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), pp. 4-13.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys4810/phys4810_fa08/4810_readings/Sfard.pdf

Playing and working with words and music - étude : ctude

étude

An étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd /; French pronunciation: ​[eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, of considerable difficulty, and designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tude

ctude

A ctude is a care assessment and evaluation instrument, a composition that is usually short, in summary form comprised of key concepts, and yet capable of representing the complexity of health and social care contexts. The ctude is designed to provide practice material for developing expertise in care assessment, holistic and integrated care that is also person-centred. Coined from étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd /; French pronunciation: ​[eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) it is a study in care and can be a snapshot, or a dynamic series.