Students’ Performative Strategies in the Practical part of Nursing Education: An international Collection of Ethnographic research on Learners Experiences

The current political agenda has placed practical education in medium cycle education programs on the agenda with emphasis on more structured and organized teaching initiatives.
This paper examines what kinds of performative strategies students employ to achieve these goals. ‘Performative strategies’ are mainly examined in a Bourdieu perspective where incorporated structures orient the student to act in a specific cultural setting. The study is based on ethnographic field studies at two Danish hospital wards and interviews with nurse students and clinical teachers. The study shows that the idea of controlling the learning process in an unstructured and dynamic practice, paired with the ideal of student’s self-directed learning processes, creates performative strategies in counterproductive ways. The students end up underperforming when it comes to producing an individual study plan, and the strong focus on academic knowledge means that students are performing accordingly while intrinsic qualities of practice are being downplayed.