Impact case study database

Davey’s research into the hermeneutics of practice contributes to the first text to use hermeneutics as instrumental to the development of care protocols. Through its influence on Professor Nancy Moules (Chair of Child Cancer, University of Calgary), aspects of his hermeneutics of practice have been deployed as part of a new tradition of “qualitative research” in psychology and social science, reaching international practitioner audiences through adoption in nursing curricula and enabling the practical application of hermeneutic structures to meet the demands of nursing practice.

Davey’s involvement with the Calgary unit began in June 2014 with a week of lectures on “The Hermeneutics of Practice” at the invitation of Moules. In associated workshops he responded to patient presentations concerning their lived experience of trauma and acute illness. These corroborated his approach to empathetic transference in crisis situations. Moules’ course text, published a year after Davey’s Calgary presentations, document the impact of Davey’s research on her project [E1].

Moules’ research has multiple aims: to alter attitudes towards nursing practice by presenting it as more than a technology of care; to promote the voice of nursing in humanities’ debates about human well-being in times of crisis; and to remodel the specialist/patient relationship as a mode of dialogical exchange leading to the mutual transformation of both patient and carer.

Distinctively, her research attempts to free nursing from the (ward) desk by opposing its reduction to a technology of patient management and to promote the practice’s practical understanding of suffering within humanities’ debates about mortality. In responding to the “technology of patient management”, Moules makes explicit reference to Davey’s hermeneutic critique of method in her case against positivist reductions of nursing pedagogy; Davey’s dialogical hermeneutics further provides Moules with the reflective tools to articulate the transformative nature of patient-carer dialogue as a way to change the understanding of what it means to care and to be cared for.

Amongst other hermeneuticians, Davey is cited most with 33 references. Moules substantiates Davey’s claim that genuine listening must stay close to the horizon of the patient [ E1, p.94], and that empathetic understanding requires imaginative witnessing [ E1, p.68]. She confirms the therapeutic value of the dialogical with an extensive quotation from Davey 2006 p.xvi [ E1, p.198]. In 2015, a year after Davey’s address, Moules wrote:

Having a glimpse of applied hermeneutics through the eyes of philosophical experts is at the same time gratifying and a stimulating reminder that we are working fresh ground, and it behooves us to keep working to be as exacting as we can about what we do. It is in this spirit that it felt timely to undertake to describe the work-in-progress that is applied hermeneutics in the fleshed out form of a book [i.e., the course text of 2015]. [E2]

Since the publication of her pioneering book, Moules has been awarded five national prizes for nursing excellence. Her work has brought instrumental changes to the way in which clinical guidelines and care standards are communicated empathetically to patients in Canada [ E1, p.185]. The influence of Davey’s work has been acknowledged by Moules who notes:

Professor Davey has contributed to my understanding of hermeneutics and Gadamer’s work. Through me, graduate students across disciplines have been opened to understanding the philosophy that guides our practices and research. [E3]

Davey’s broader influence is also confirmed by an Associate Professor in the Calgary Nursing Unit who comments on the power of hermeneutics in influencing the language of “therapeutic change” and the “significance of dialogue in forming collaborative relationships with patients” describing this as “a deeply hermeneutic way of thinking, that does run counter to conventional approaches of diagnosis and symptom management” [E4]. He further states:

Hermeneutics is well accepted as a basis for research into problems of human relating in nursing, education, and healthcare – not only in our own institution but also translating into success securing Canadian federal research funding … Your emphasis on hermeneutics-as-practice is highly congruent with our needs and approach. [E4]

In separate correspondence, Davey’s perspective is acknowledged more broadly as a way to bring physicians “closer to the flesh and blood realities of patient experiences” and as an ongoing influence [E5].

Moules’ course text has been taken up by 3 UK University and Nursing libraries, 22 in the US, 4 in Switzerland, 3 in Australia, 8 in Canada as well as teaching institutes in Denmark, France, New Zealand, Qatar, Sweden and South Africa [E6]. As a result of Davey’s engagement with the Calgary Group, his hermeneutics of practice has reached beyond academia and now touches a more universal community of concern:

When we practice hermeneutics as a research tradition… we come to understand… matters of human consequence: living well in conditions where suffering often exists... [this research] touches on human conditions of living: illness, schools, children, health, relationships, suffering, healing and hope. [E1]

Smith and Robb developed a collaborative project: ‘Localising Philosophy, Democratising Technology.’ This used a 1932 radio broadcast by Walter Benjamin – ‘The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay’ – as a catalyst and focus for producing accessible resources for schools. The resources updated the message and examples of Benjamin’s broadcast, and explored themes from the underpinning research. The broadcast was chosen because it: 1) sits within the post-Kantian philosophical tradition; 2) focuses on an ‘exceptional technology’ (a failed bridge); 3) experiments in innovative ways with visual art examples; 4) describes something that is already part of local school curricula and the cultural capital of people in Dundee (the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879). Resources produced include lesson plans, a ‘users’ guide, short talk, podcast, and a specially commissioned arts film. They are collated at a bespoke open-access website.

In-class development sessions began in April 2018. While the initial focus was on face-to-face teaching, following the events of the pandemic, Smith and Robb worked with an assigned member of the Dundee City Council (DCC) Digital Skills team to move to a blended learning context, with the project resources made available through the DCC education authority. The whole process had interconnected impacts on a public service (DCC’s Digital Skills team), practitioners (teachers implementing pedagogies and curricula), and learning and participation (pupils).

Digital Skills Policy: In June 2020, the resources were endorsed by DCC education authority for use among its teachers. Dundee has high levels of child poverty, with high levels of digital exclusion. Scotland-wide, the recent ‘Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review’ (Mark Logan, 2020) establishes government policy to develop technology education to support economic and social recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. DCC’s Chief Education Officer and Digital Skills team endorsed the project resources as an innovative way of ameliorating these issues in a context where they had been made acute by the COVID-19 pandemic [E1, E2].

Although project resources were initially developed prior to the pandemic, and the original pathway to impact was adversely affected by the pandemic, Smith and Robb were able to work with the DCC Digital Skills team to develop the resources such that they responded to the emergent needs of the education authority. As a result, the resources were made available to c.1600 teachers across DCC authority via the authority’s ‘Glow’ platform, and formally adopted as part of DCC’s ongoing digital skills policy [E2]. The Digital Skills team commented: ‘It is imperative that we close the gap between technology and creative industries…. This project provides so much scope … to do this at all levels, from Early Years to Higher Education’ [E2]. The Chief Education Officer reflected: ‘this work is helping my team address some of the issues around poverty, digital inclusion and the lack of equity in this area.... we are receiving very positive feedback from our digital team, our colleagues in schools, and learners…. this is an area to be further developed as we move through recovery from COVID-19 restrictions and schools find themselves able to receive partners and visitors in schools again.’ [E1].

Pedagogies and Curricula: Smith and Robb conducted Career-Long Professional Learning (CLPL) sessions for teachers in October and December 2020, at which they shared their research insights. This resulted in the resources informing work in nine DCC area schools (c. 20% of schools in DCC). This ranged from a primary 6 project in a 20% Most Deprived area (Fintry Primary) to a Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies (RMPS) project in one of DCC’s highest performing secondary schools (Grove Academy) [E3]. Teachers from diverse subjects including RMPS, English, and STEM participated, with learning outcomes of c.150 pupils directly affected. Impacts of the resources included adaptation to extant curriculum needs, and cross-curricular innovations. Examples of work made possible by the resources include: a project using Minecraft to teach digital integrity [E1], creative writing portfolio elements exploring possible future technologies [E2], and an RMPS unit on refugee experiences [E3]. On the ongoing usefulness of resources, the Head of RME at the High School of Dundee commented: ‘I’ll be very happy to include your work in the curriculum. It has arrived at a very convenient time, in terms of the cross-curricular work that I’m trying to develop, apart from being a first-rate exercise in philosophy’ [E4].

Pupils: The underpinning research created resources that have turned classrooms into spaces for reflection, discussion and creativity in relation to philosophical questions about technologies. The resources enabled these questions to be generated by participants themselves. Questions generated by the pupils during sessions included: ‘How does information become money?’, ‘How do smartphones make us feel emotions?’, ‘Do technologies change our sense of right and wrong?’, ‘What can old technologies tell us about future ones?’, ‘Does technology make humans into a new hybrid species?’ [E3]. Together, these questions enabled pupils to research and share new reflexive concepts of technology, and to develop forms of active voice in discussions about the roles of technology in everyday life.

The resources also facilitated changed perceptions among teachers regarding what was possible with pupils. One noted that the resources were ‘a fantastic way of getting the kids engaged’ and that ‘learning about the [Tay Bridge] disaster is necessary, especially for a city rediscovering its identity and heritage’ [E5]. Another noted : ‘When we are asked to consider ICT in lesson-planning, it’s basically always in terms of “how can we use the iPads in this lesson?” The Localising Philosophy project points towards a better kind of question – “what can this lesson tell us about what technology means for us?”’ [E6]. The head of RME at the High School of Dundee commented: ‘The combination of philosophy and art was very effective…, it encouraged class members to express and develop their own thoughts rather than wait, passively, to receive other people’s ideas’ [E4].