A Physiotherapy practice educator’s reflection upon changes in teaching carried out for student practice placements

Abstract

This article is a reflective account of a Physiotherapy educator’s efforts to improve the facilitation of learning for undergraduate students, by implementing changes to the ‘In-Service Training’ (IST) or in-house teaching, based on accepted educa-tional theories and relevant literature. The qualitative experiences of two subse-quent pairs of students on the same practice placement were reviewed, before and after changes were made to the planning, structure, teaching methods and facilitation of the IST. The changes implemented resulted from the collection and analysis of student-generated feedback in the form of reflective pro-formas, learn-ing style inventories, as well as the authors own reflective analysis. These raised concerns about the pedagogical, inflexible and didactic nature of the educational methods utilised. Changes to the facilitation of education in this practice place-ment were instigated for the second pair of students, which incorporated a transi-tion to andragogical strategies/approaches, consisting of for example; greater evaluation of student centred factors such as their individual learning styles/instructional preferences and learning processes, as well as the implementation of jointly set learning outcomes and more flexible participative methods of education. Following these changes, greater learner satisfaction was reported and a more consistent faster and broader achievement of the student’s individual and place-ment learning outcomes was noted