BECOMING PHYSIOTHERAPIST, LESSONS FROM DELTA-STREAM

J.E. van Wijchen^1,2, M.J. van Wijchen³

¹Western Norway University of applied Sciences, Institute for Health and Functioning, Bergen, Norway, ²HAN University of applied Sciences, School of Health Studies, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ³Bij CAS Revalideer en Presteer, Physiotherapy, Rosmalen, Netherlands

Background: Do physiotherapy educational programs prepare becoming physiotherapists to be able to support future health challenges of society? This is far from what many novices physiotherapists experience after graduation. We therefore designed an alternative physiotherapy curriculum, the “delta-stream”, a learning landscape in undergraduate physiotherapy education at HAN University of applies sciences, the Netherlands. The focus lies on the process of becoming a physiotherapist, one who can practise with confidence and take responsibility in known and unknown situations. To facilitate this process, an open learning landscape was created, providing room for dilemmas, paradoxes, and situational influences. In this learning landscape we experienced a collaborative journey in uncertainty. We were confronted with a multitude of professional issues, concerning advocacy, leadership, relationships, justice, and equity, as such a major fertiliser for our collaborative and individual mindlines.

Purpose: Since 2015 the delta-stream developed, changed, and adapted to altering circumstances. Although the delta stream started with a conceptual basis in becoming and progressive education, new ways of practice had to established. We started a project to explore which key-elements for learning and teaching would be transferable and could be contextualised in various situations.

Methods: During this project we used an iterative process of reflective conversations and developmental evaluations. This work was done by a working group consisting of students and teachers within the delta-stream and critical friends outside of the delta-stream.

Results: Three key-elements for teaching and learning from the delta-stream:

• Analogy between practice and education
• Co-agency between teachers and students in alle facets of the learning process
• Support construction of collaborative and individual mindlines.

Conclusions: It is possible to create alternative educational ways of becoming a physiotherapist. In the delta-stream students experience freedom to explore, deviate, and take responsibility, individual and as part of community. Where ethical dilemmas emerge situational and where advocacy and leadership become natural trades.Where self- and together-management go hand in hand. Where teachers are fellow learners, coaching others, combining expertise with coming to know through collaborative endeavours.

Implications: Education should prepare for the uncertainties and complexities of professional practice. As such it is paramount to create a landscape in which these can emerge from day one. This asks for continues transparent and developmental dialogues between students and learners in which the process of becoming is evaluated and designed. This means a shift in the roles of student and teacher in which both are learning coaches to each one another and to further develop ones´ capabilities.

Funding acknowledgements: The project is partly fundet by a Dutch Comenius teaching fellowship: "Critical Emancipative Learning, joyful complex, comfortable uncertain!"

Keywords:
Delta-stream
Becoming
Mindlines

Topics:
Education: methods of teaching & learning
Professional issues
Professionalism & ethics

Did this work require ethics approval? No

Reason: this is about evaluation and learning in an educational project, not involving health-related research