This thesis explores the concept of socialisation through the experiences of nurse educators within a United Kingdom context in one higher education institution in the Northwest of England. Built upon the assumption that nurse educators‘ practices and dispositions are shaped and affected by the sociocultural field in which they occur, attention is paid to identifying these influences reflected through an understanding of their curriculum practices.

A micro-ethnographic philosophy is adopted where semi-structured interviews are the key data source from a volunteer group of twenty nurse educators‘ informant accounts, inter-woven with observations and my reflections as a nurse educator, and therefore written in the first person. As I also claim a pertinent professional cultural heritage all data are collected and analysed from an insider-researcher position. Pierre Bourdieu‘s relational concepts of field, capital and habitus are applied as a template through which the accounts of nurse educators are filtered and interpreted.

In this thesis I will argue that nurse educators experience difficult transitions in and between the fields in which they practise and that their dominant, but hidden, values contribute to their perceived marginalisation within the academic community and field of higher education.
Nurse educators appear to adopt practices that reflect their practitioner habitus which contradicts the popular perspectives of academic roles and identity, referred to as an academic habitus. This negatively affects the development of academic identity and contributes to difficulties experienced in accruing academic capital. Specifically, curriculum practices are affected by the hegemonic values of nurse educators where practice-bred values conflict with academic world values.