Blurred Boundaries School Nursing and the Boundaries of Nursing and Education, 1950-1979 Kailee Steger

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Steger, Kailee, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Nursing., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

0569.

0573.

0578.

0680.

Local Subjects:

0569.

0573.

0578.

0680.

Physical Description:

1 electronic resource (150 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-07A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2025

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Blurred Boundaries: School Nurses and the Boundaries of Nursing and Education, 1950-1979, explores how school nurses in mid-twentieth-century America navigated professional identity at the intersection of nursing and education. While the origins of school nursing have often been located in Progressive Era reform and figures like Lillian Wald, this study focuses on a later period of transformation-when school nurses confronted shifting institutional expectations, declining public health infrastructure, and the increasing bureaucratization of school systems.This dissertation argues that school nursing identity between 1950 and 1979 did not emerge through a singular process of professionalization, but through the everyday negotiation of interprofessional tensions between education and health, as well as intraprofessional tensions within nursing itself. Licensed professionals who aligned themselves with teachers, school nurses nonetheless worked under inconsistent supervision, with limited resources, and in roles that were often misunderstood. They also navigated disagreement within their own profession-particularly as affiliation with labor unions and educational institutions challenged nursing's traditional identity as a service-oriented, non-unionized field. Their authority emerged through adaptive, relational care-managing chronic conditions, responding to social inequality, and translating between medical and educational frameworks.Drawing on extensive archival research from national, state, and local sources- including the National Education Association (NEA), the Illinois Association of School Nurses (IASN), and the Chicago Public School nurse records-this study traces how school nurses built professional identity not just through credentialing and advocacy, but through practice. Chapter Two examines the creation of the Department of School Nurses within the NEA and the tensions between school nurses and national education organizations. Chapter Three analyzes how the IASN pursued certification and legislative recognition while distancing itself from public health and managing internal professional disagreements. Chapter Four turns to Chicago, where the "teacher-nurse" model revealed how race, segregation, and resource scarcity shaped school health on the ground.This dissertation challenges the notion that professional identity is secured through titles or policy, instead showing how it was forged through the often-invisible work of care. School nurses, assigned a seat within the education system, continually redefined their presence-not through formal authority, but through their indispensable role in keeping students well enough to learn

Notes:

Advisors: McDonald, Catherine C.; Connolly, Cynthia A. Committee members: Zimmerman, Jonathan; McDonald, Catherine

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-07, Section: A.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2025

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798276001500

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license