Six Prepositions That Can Change How We Build Nursing Theory

 

Article information

Cleofas, J. V., & Abesamis, L. E. A. (2026). Theorizing from, about, through, for, with, and towards: Six prepositions to guide theoretical reflexivity in nursing. Advances in Nursing Science, 00, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1097/ANS.0000000000000625

What this paper is about

A lot of us were trained to treat nursing theory like a finished object: something you “apply,” “test,” “audit,” or “use as a framework.” This paper pushes back. It says the bigger issue is often a reflexivity gap: we don’t always name howtheories are made, who makes them, for whom, and toward what futures.

So, rather than offering yet another theory typology, the authors propose a practical tool for theoretical reflexivity: a “reflexive grammar” organized around six prepositions—theorizing from, about, through, for, with, and towards. The idea is simple: every theory is already doing these things, even if we don’t say so. Making them explicit strengthens rigor and ethical accountability.

Why this matters

When theorizing stays “invisible,” two things happen:

1. We over-focus on the product. We spend energy judging whether a theory is coherent, testable, or “generalizable,” but under-discuss the social conditions that shaped it—funding, publication systems, English-language dominance, disciplinary canons, and who has protected time to theorize.
2. We reproduce inequities unintentionally. The paper notes how theories that become “canonical” often come from historically privileged (often WEIRD/Global North) contexts—yet travel as if universal. Without reflexive adaptation, this can reinforce mismatches and even inequities in other settings.

In short: theorizing is not just intellectual work. It is contingent, embodied, relational, infrastructural, and political labor—and nursing needs language to talk about that openly. 

The core contribution: six prepositions for reflexive theorizing

Think of the six prepositions as “checkpoints” you can revisit any time—while building a concept, writing a discussion paper, reviewing a manuscript, or teaching a theory class. They are not steps in a linear process; they are lenses you can hold simultaneously.

1) Theorizing from (positionality and standpoint)

All theories come from somewhere—and from someone. This lens asks you to name your location: biography, practice history, discipline training, institutional and geopolitical context, and moral commitments. It treats positionality as part of rigor, not a threat to it.

2) Theorizing about (what phenomenon you claim is “real”)

Every theory makes an ontological move: it declares what exists and what counts as a legitimate nursing concern. This lens asks: what are you naming as “nursable”? What does your theory make newly visible—or newly sayable?

3) Theorizing through (epistemology and method)

How do you claim to know what you’re claiming? This lens brings attention to the epistemic route you used—concept analysis, critique, narrative inquiry, modeling, pragmatist reasoning, posthuman analysis, etc.—and what that route highlights or obscures. 

4) Theorizing for (beneficiaries and purpose)

Who is the theory designed to matter for? Nurses? Patients? Communities? Institutions? The “for” lens clarifies the intended work of the theory—what it enables in practice, education, organization, or advocacy. 

5) Theorizing with (relationships, infrastructures, and sociomateriality)

Theories are co-produced—through collaboration, mentorship, peer review, funding systems, curricula, and also nonhuman infrastructures (e.g., documentation systems, algorithms, software). This lens also raises the ethics of epistemic ownership: are communities merely “data sources,” or co-theorists whose interpretive authority matters? 

6) Theorizing towards (values, moral horizons, imagined futures)

All theory is future-facing: it makes some worlds more likely than others. This lens asks what moral horizon the theory carries—what it invites, demands, or normalizes in nursing’s future (clinical, educational, social, ecological, epistemic).

An “ecology,” not a ladder

A key move in the paper is to treat these six lenses as an ecology: they shape each other recursively. For instance, your standpoint (“from”) influences what you can notice (“about”); that influences your evidentiary route (“through”); that shapes who benefits (“for”); that shapes collaboration/ownership (“with”); and all of that carries value commitments (“towards”), which then loops back to how you locate yourself.

To make this visible, the authors present a 6×6 matrix showing how each locus can influence each other locus—a teaching and reflection tool for researchers, students, and reviewers. 

Why this is useful (even if you’re not “a theorist”)

This framework is not just for people who write grand theories. It’s for anyone doing knowledge work—writing a discussion paper, designing a study, choosing a framework, adapting a model to a new context, or reviewing manuscripts. The claim is that nursing advances not only by accumulating theories, but by cultivating theorizing as a reflexive practice.

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Policy/practice recommendations (actionable takeaways)

For researchers (and teams)

• Add a brief “Reflexive grammar” box to theory papers: 2–3 sentences each for from/about/through/for/with/towards (even in empirical papers, if a framework is central).
• When exporting a framework across contexts, explicitly write what changes under from/about/for/towards—so “generalizability” becomes responsible transfer, not copy-paste.

For nursing educators

• Teach theory as praxis: ask students to map any assigned theory using the six prepositions, including what’s unknown or not disclosed (and treat that gap as an analytic finding). 
• Use the 6×6 matrix as a classroom activity to show how “method choices” are also political and ethical choices. 

For practice leaders and guideline developers

• When adopting theories into protocols or EHR templates, do a quick “with/towards” audit: what values get encoded into workflows and metrics? What gets erased?

For editors and peer reviewers

• Expand review criteria beyond clarity/adequacy to include: standpoint transparency (from), beneficiary clarity (for), and future orientation (towards)—without using this as a gatekeeping weapon.

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Glossary of key terms

• Theorizing (vs theory) — “Theory” is the stabilized product; theorizing is the ongoing work of sense-making, negotiating concepts, and building meaning in relation to practice and power.
• Theoretical reflexivity — Deliberately making explicit the positional, epistemic, relational, and value-laden conditions under which theory is produced and travels. 
• Metatheory — Thinking about how theory itself is built, evaluated, and governed in a discipline. 
• Metaparadigm / holarchy — Classic nursing structures that helped organize disciplinary knowledge, often emphasizing hierarchies of abstraction. 
• Theory auditing — Evaluating theory using standardized criteria (clarity, simplicity, generality, empirical adequacy), which can obscure the social/political conditions of theorizing. 
• Positionality / standpoint (theorizing “from”) — Your social location, biography, training, and commitments that shape what you can see, name, and legitimize. 
• Ontology (theorizing “about”) — What you claim exists; how you carve reality into a “phenomenon” that counts for nursing. 
• Epistemology (theorizing “through”) — How you justify knowledge claims; what counts as evidence and how meaning is made. 
• Axiology / teleology (theorizing “towards”) — The values and purposes embedded in a theory; the futures and moral horizons it makes imaginable.
• Sociomateriality / posthuman mediators — The idea that infrastructures and nonhuman tools (EHRs, algorithms, software) participate in knowledge-making and care. 
• Epistemic justice — Attending to whose knowledge gets legitimized, cited, and taught; and how theory travel can reinscribe inequities. 
• Ecology of reflexive relations — Treating the six prepositions as a recursive system that shapes itself, rather than a linear checklist.