Saga – Nancy Diekelmann – Part 2

Welcome to Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga where we  use stories to connect the past to the present   and then our future as we reimagine our teaching  and learning. As we celebrate the NLN Year of the   Nurse Educator, we pay tribute to extraordinary  nurses who have made significant contributions   to nursing education. we dive into the stories  of nurse educators who recognized a need ,  challenged traditional customs, and influenced 

transformative change. This is part two   of our story about Dr. Nancy Diekelmann and her  colleague Dr. Pamela Ironside, leaders of the NLN's   curriculum revolution. Part one shared how  together they called for a transformation   in the design of nursing programs in the  decisions regarding content selection   and in the ways in which student learning  was facilitated. Part two will explore how   they conceptualized curriculum as dialogue and 

meaning. Together they asked vital questions:   how should the knowledge or subject matter that  nurses need to enter nursing practice safely   be selected and sequenced? What is the role of  experience in nursing education? How will we   as a discipline encourage teachers  to develop their pedagogical literacy?   How can the new pedagogies help clinical  teachers transform practice education and   provide feedback to students in ways that  enhance their learning to think like nurses? 

Dr. Diekelmann referred to curriculum as dialogue  and meaning, stating that in this model, curriculum   is a dialogue among teachers, practitioners, and  students on what will constitute the knowledge in   the nursing curriculum and what role experience  will play in the curriculum. In her words:   To Dr. Diekelmann, narrative pedagogy reminds us   that learning is what teaching is all about. 

Dr. Ironside added that in post-modern pedagogy,   there is a concern for how teaching has taken over  the grand narrative of the teacher as information   giver. In the new pedagogy, the teacher joins  as a co-equal with students in the struggle to   understand nursing practice, in the context of  what Dr. Diekelmann called "Concernful Practices." 

To her, the Concernful Practices of schooling  learning and teaching provide faculty and   students with a new way of talking about their  experiences that exceeds the common focus on   content and objectives. By attending to listening  and responding to a dialogue, nurse educators can   connect with how students are thinking about  nursing care, address their understanding of the   content, and help interpret how the content  relates to the critical care of patients.  

The focus toward the student as a person allows  nurse educators a way to attend to the dialogue   in the moment and address the students biases  and decision-making processes in patient care   at that time. This is the essence of situated  learning. The Concernful Practices, the practice of   learning and interpretive thinking, helps students  challenge their assumptions and think through   and interpret situations they  encounter from multiple perspectives.  

By focusing teachers' and students' attention on  thinking and interpreting as communal experiences ,  interpretive pedagogies such as Narrative  Pedagogy engage teachers and students in pooling   their wisdom, challenging their preconceptions,  envisioning new possibilities for providing care ,  and engaging with others to dialogue  about the practice of nursing.

As nurse educators today, who are endeavoring  to more fully engage students in the learning   experience, embracing them as co-learners, we are  indebted to the powerful narrative generated by   Drs. Diekelmann and Ironside. They embraced  dialogue as a meaningful teaching practice   and helped us to understand that decisions  about patient care are only meaningful   in the context in which faculty students 

and practitioners experience them. Knowledge   about nursing practice is achieved contextually,  since all participants - teachers, practitioners,  and students - attend in their own way to  the new meanings they have experienced.   This foundation of what teaching and learning  involves was revolutionary at the time and led   the groundwork for so much of the situated  learning explored in nursing education today .