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The complexity of the health care system and chaotic clinical environments beckons nurses who can conceptualize and integrate emancipatory knowing into their clinical practice. A praxis of emancipatory knowing offers nurses a means to reflect and act in a manner that advocates for social justice and human rights on behalf of the patients for whom they care each day (Chinn & Kramer, 2011 ; Cowling, Chinn, & Hagedorn, 2000 ; Falk-Rafael, 2005 ; Harden, 1996 ). Specifically, emancipatory knowing is the aptitude to acknowledge social and political "injustice or inequity, to realize that things could be different, and to piece together complex elements of experience and context to change a situation as it is to a situation that improves people's lives " (Chinn & Kramer, 2011 , p. 64). Understanding the concept of emancipatory knowing and its theoretical basis is essential to knowing how to integrate it into practice. This way of knowing, derived from multiple perspectives and theories, offers a relevant addition to nursing research, theory, and practice (Chinn & Kramer, 2011 ). For many nurses, the basis for understanding this concept may or may not commence during their educational program, as it may depend on their program philosophy, curriculum structure, and the philosophical values and beliefs of the nursing faculty who teach them. Given these different variables, contextualizing emancipatory knowing may vary among nurses. Nursing students, who learn to embrace emancipatory knowing as praxis, may likely continue doing so after they graduate. The purposes of this article are to present a brief overview of the historical and theoretical perspectives that led to the conceptualization of emancipatory knowing, to discuss its significance to nursing, and to offer examples of how nursing faculty can empower students to integrate emancipatory knowing into clinical practice.
Historical Overview
Historically, nurses have confronted power imbalances throughout their educational programs and careers. Emancipatory efforts in nursing history are often blended with feminist views, particularly during the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s and as characterized by Jo Ann Ashley in her book Hospitals, Paternalism, and the Role of the Nurse (1976 ; Chinn & Kramer, 2011 ). In this book, Ashley (1976 ) traced the historical roots of oppression in nursing through a...