Nursing pedagogy revisited – constitution, contexts, and conceptions of a scientific field of work (PP-REV: Triple- KonwiA)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Karin Reiber
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education ; Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556216185

The project analyses the institutionalization and genesis of nursing pedagogy as a scientific field of work in the scientific system. In order to investigate this scientific field of work from different perspectives, data will be collected by means of three interview studies. Three groups of actors are interviewed using different qualitative approaches to origins and development contexts, composition of subjects, their own and further conceptions. Three different qualitative interview approaches are evaluated uniformly and results are mutually linked. In sum, this results in a multifaceted picture of the genesis, development and status quo of the scientific field of work of nursing pedagogy. By means of narrative interviews, pioneering professors of nursing pedagogy will be interviewed to the origin context of nursing pedagogy as a scientific field of work, its institutionalization in the academic system and their own professional concepts related to their individual scientific socialization. Within the scope of episodic interviews, newly appointed professors of nursing pedagogy will be asked about their specific perspectives on prior understandings and constellations as well as the respective form of acquisition and continuation. Group interviews with professors close to the field serve to analyse the informed external perception of nursing pedagogy. The narrative and episodic interviews as well as the group discussion are evaluated using the documentary method – in order to determine subjective definitions and existing concepts of nursing pedagogy in the context of the interviewees’ professional function. Congruent interpretations and disjoint self-understandings of pioneering and newly appointed professors are analysed. These self-descriptions and self-attributions are contrasted with the informed external perspective of the professors close to them as part of the group discussion. The results of the three interview studies are related to each other bi- and multilaterally; triangulation takes place using an evaluation heuristic with five structuring dimensions. This synopsis and interweaving of the results allows a comprehensive review of the emergence and development of nursing pedagogy as a scientific field of work, its thinking styles and thought collectives. The material is interpreted within the framework of a thinking style analysis with a view to the social constitution of the scientific field of nursing pedagogy. Thus, the project takes advantage of the current opportunity to collect, document, and discuss knowledge and interpretations of both pioneering key figures of nursing pedagogy and those working in new contexts, as well as their critical friends, in order to describe a comprehensive status quo and open up perspectives for further development.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants