Klinikkens didaktik i et professionspædagogisk perspektiv

The practical part of nursing education has been boosted by professional bachelor education, and clinical teachers have accordingly emerged as legitimate professionals. The aim of this paper is to show patterns in these professionals’ teaching practices and how they comply with the embedded qualities of practical knowledge. Ethnographic field studies have been conducted at two different Danish hospital wards and at a clinical teacher education program at a university college, along with formal interviews with involved agents. Data are analyzed within a Bourdieu framework and supplemented with concepts from Abbott’s work on professions. The study shows that the teaching practices combine abstract and academic knowledge, bio-medical knowledge, and a belief in strongly structured pedagogical technologies in clinical wards. This tendency is reproducing the classic knowledge hierarchy, and the embedded qualities of practical knowledge are at risk of being superseded by symbolic school activities.