This crude and unpolished bifurcation caricatures the issues at stake. Values and norms remain unspecified, and the threat posed to values/norms by contrarian argument is not explained. Nonetheless, complex conundrums are generated for educators when commitments or ways of acting that accompany professional values and norms are tested by argument. And with this disjuncture in mind, although it is commonly supposed that, in the academy, learning should proceed independently of external direction or restraint, this chapter discusses the possibility that university nurse educators can fail to introduce ideas to students when those ideas destabilise or offend presumptions about ‘correct’ thought and action. Correctness here references professional values and norms originating outside the academy, and if behaviour and ways of thinking sanctioned by extraneous commitments are privileged by educators to the detriment of critical investigation when investigation challenges professionally lauded notions of appropriate practice, a key feature of higher education (encouraging unfettered intellectual inquiry) is compromised.

Two background assumptions scaffold these statements. First, a real problem exists. Second, critical investigation and critical thinking about or into complex issues beneficially contribute to learning and (tangentially) care. These assumptions are accepted rather than demonstrated. Nevertheless, given this scaffolding the following question is posed: ought professional commitments and the forms of care they inform be explored in the academy in precisely the same way (i.e., critically) that other ideas/practices are handled?