Pediatric Nurses in Early Childhood Intervention in Germany—Emergence of a New Professional Role: Situational Analysis and Mapping

Abstract

In this essay, we show how an arena is created and how a new field of work for pediatric nursing emerges from it. The situation of pediatric nurses in early childhood intervention in Germany is presented, considering related social worlds and discourses as well as historical, social, and political processes. Based on a study using interview data of pediatric nurses, text documents and field notes, we demonstrate how components of the theory/methods package of situational analysis can be used to analyze the genesis of a specialized professional group in its embeddedness in an arena. In particular, the concepts of social worlds/arenas theory and the concept of processual ordering are applied. Mapping strategies are harnessed to structure discourse material in order to show the positioning of different elements in the arena and to discuss them in their interrelation and against the background of current developments in the nursing profession.

Keywords

• situational analysis
• social worlds/arenas
• processual ordering
• positional maps
• early childhood intervention
• nursing profession