Experiencing Narrative Pedagogy: Conversations with Nurse Educators

Abstract

The increasingly complex nature of health care requires nursing graduates, upon completion of their formal education, to be fully capable of providing safe and competent patient care. Accrediting bodies for schools of nursing have challenged nursing education to develop and implement innovative, research-based pedagogies that engage students in learning. Narrative Pedagogy is an innovative approach to teaching and learning developed by Nancy Diekelmann after many years of researching nursing education using Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology. As a new paradigm for teachers and students gathering in learning, Narrative Pedagogy is understood to be both a strategy and a philosophy of teaching. Narrative Pedagogy as a strategy provides an approach using the interpretation of clinical stories to better understand the experience of the patient, the nurse, and the family. Narrative Pedagogy as a philosophy of teaching offers Diekelmann’s Concernful Practices as a way of comportment for teachers and students as they gather in learning and teachers as they incline toward teaching narratively. This hermeneutic phenomenological study examined the experience of Nurse Educators with Narrative Pedagogy. Findings include overarching Pattern: Narrative Pedagogy as Bridge. Two themes are: 1) Students and teachers gathering in learning, and 2) Inclining toward teaching with Narrative Pedagogy. Positive teaching experiences and positive learning experiences with Narrative Pedagogy will advance the science of nursing education by adding to the body of knowledge of alternative pedagogies.