The Student's Perspective on What Makes an Exceptional Practice Placement Educator

Abstract

A Canadian occupational therapy organisation has recognised exceptional student supervision for practice placements by giving awards since 1990. Students have voluntarily nominated their practice placement educator by writing a statement outlining why the educator deserved the award. To determine the student's perspective on what qualities make an exceptional educator, the researchers analysed the 103 nominations using thematic analysis. Four primary themes emerged from the data, namely creating a positive learning environment, facilitating learning, being a role model and having a positive effect on the student. Although this study focused on the exceptional practice placement educator, the findings are relevant to anyone striving to improve the quality of the practice placement learning experience.

What makes a quality occupational therapy practice placement? Students’ and practice educators’ perspectives

“…This included provision of an organised orientation program and clear expectations about what was required of students. This was consistent with the findings of Kirke et al (2007) and Mulholland, Derdall and Roy (2006), who found that a welcoming environment involved both an affective quality and an organisational one involving preparation such as gathering resources, and time spent clarifying learning needs, setting up learning experiences, making sufficient time to direct the student's learning and assessment (Kirke et al, 2007;Mulholland et al, 2006).…”

“…Approachability and friendly communication has been found (Bonello, 2001;Hummell, 1997;Kirke et al, 2007;Mulholland et al, 2006) to be supportive of students' learning. The balance between supervision and autonomy was raised both by participants in this and previous studies (Bonello, 2001;French & Hughes, 2007;Kirke et al, 2007).…”

“…Provision of timely, constructive feedback was also discussed extensively by all participants. In addition, provision of regular, balanced and constructive feedback has also been noted by Kirke et al (2007) and Mulholland et al (2006) to be critical for effective student learning.…”

Facilitating Student Occupational Therapists' Mastery of Occupation-Centred Approaches for Working with Children

“…As described by Rodger et al (in press) and Mulholland et al (2006), the practice educators in this study sought to create a supportive environment and an open relationship to make students feel safe to "have a go" in unfamiliar clinical situations and learn from their mistakes. This may be a more difficult task and require more attention for OCP approaches in which there are fewer predetermined procedures, such as standardised assessments or pre-planned, directed therapy sessions, than in other therapy approaches.…”

Perceptions of Italian student nurses of the concept of professional respect during their clinical practice learning experience

“…1), are strongly interconnected as emerged also in other studies (Mulholland et al, 2006;Papastavrou et al, 2010;Skaalvik et al, 2011). If the organization of clinical teaching fosters the partnership between clinical teachers and students (Saarikoski and Leino-Kilpi, 2002), the students will advance in understanding their professional identity (Andrew, 2012;Brennan and Timmins, 2012) and will be motivated to foster professional values (Keeling and Templeman, 2013).…”