Signature pedagogies: An integrative review of an emerging concept in nursing education

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to provide an integrative review of the literature associated with signature pedagogies and to discover what lessons have been learned about unearthing, articulating and applying signature pedagogies across a variety of disciplines, but particularly with respect to nursing. Design: A systematic search of databases using key terms was utilised with a particular focus to papers emerging from nursing disciplines. Data sources: The databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, Web of Science and Google Scholar were searched for literature from 2005 to 2018 inclusive. Review methods: An initial examination of titles and abstracts by the authors resulted in the retrieval of 45 papers and following the application of exclusion criteria, 25 papers were included. Results and conclusions: Signature pedagogy literature is a developing area and scholars both in nursing disciplines and beyond, often fail to develop on Lee Shulman's framework in their identification of signature pedagogies, resulting in poorly adapted conceptions. Ways forward include closer linking with the original signature pedagogy framework in research, the development of robust evidence-based signature pedagogy identification processes in disciplines and a reconsideration of the esteem of scholars performing signature pedagogies within disciplines.