Desperately seeking sociology: Nursing student perceptions of sociology on nursing courses Alison Edgley, Stephen Timmons * , Brian Crosbie School of Nursing, Queen’s Medical Centre, University of Nottingham Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK Accepted 18 June 2008 KEYWORDS Sociology; Nursing curriculum; Nurse education; Qualitative research Summary This paper will present the findings of a qualitative study exploring the perceptions of students confronted by a requirement to learn sociology within a nursing curriculum. Those teaching sociology have a variety of explanations (more or less desperate), seeking to justify its place on the nursing curriculum. While there may be no resolution to the debate, the dispute thus far, has largely been between sociology and nursing academics. Absent from this debate are the voices of students ‘required’ to learn both nursing and sociology. What do students make of this con- tested territory? When students are trying to learn their trade, and know how to practice safely and efficaciously what do they make of the sociological imagination? How realistic is it to expect students to grasp both the concrete and practical with the imaginative and critical? Findings from this qualitative, focus group study suggest that students do indeed find learning sociology within a nursing curriculum ‘‘unsettling’’. It would seem that students cope in a number of ways. They fragment and compartmentalise knowl- edge(s); they privilege the interception of experiential learning on the path between theory and practice; and yet they appear to employ sociological under- standing to account for nursing’s gendered and developing professional status.  c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Background Aranda and Law (2007), in their analysis of the most recent debate about the value of sociology to nurse education, point out that it has been going on since at least 1973 ( Green, 1973) and has continued unabated to this day, citing a long list of papers. 1 The controversy in the correspon- dence columns of the Nursing Times that Aran- da and Law analyse is only the most recent 0260-6917/$ - see front matter  c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2008.06.001 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 115 8230897; fax: +44 115 9709955. E-mail address: Stephen.timmons@nottingham.ac.uk (S. Timmons). 1 Cox (1979), Cooke (1993), Sharp (1994, 1995, 1996), Balsamo and Martin (1995a,b), Porter (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998), Allen (2001), Holland (2004) and Pinikahana (2003). Nurse Education Today (2009) 29, 16–23 www.elsevier.com/nedt Nurse Education Today