Blogging and Fieldwork Education

The professional development experience can be heightened by using Blogs and peer coaching, particularly during fieldwork education. Your community of practice, blog group or on line community (whatever you want to call them) can support you in managing some of the difficult challenges you will face as a novice practitioner. If you want to know more about how peer coaching aligns with the professional development experience here is a publication you can order online from the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. Its entitled, "Reciprocal Peer Coaching: A Strategy for Training and Development in Professional Disciplines"

http://www.herdsa.org.au/guidescription.php

When entering a Blog with the hopes of getting some support from your Blog Group you should select events that are metacognitively rich experiences. These types of experiences are typically novel, complex, challenging and ill-defined. A single solution the problem may be elusive. Learners find these experiences challenging and often difficult to manage independently. Gaps in knowledge, feelings of anxiety and uncertainty frequently dominate thinking in these types of experiences. Approaching a supervisor for help can sometimes be daunting because of fears of negative appraisal. A community of practice or trusting blog group, on the other hand, can be of great use when trying to work through these difficult practice challenges. What exactly is a community of practice?

Here is a link to an example Community of Practice within a Health Care Context.

http://www.hscn.on.ca/templates/cpd_template.asp?section_id=70&page_id=601

The site provides a brief definition and also provides some examples of communities of practice that share a particular topic of interest. Imagine how the group could expand its learning if it set up a BLOG group!

The use of blogging, therefore, as part of a learning strategy can be a very powerful way of improving your professional performance. feedback. The collective discussion about the challenge heightens everyone's learning because people have to articulate what they know, and admit what they don't know. Knowledge gaps become the motivation for further exploration and quite often, things that individual's didn't even know they didn't even know become uncovered, and available for action. This type of learning is driven by what is called cognitive development theory. The sharing of knowledge between individuals within a blog group exposes knowledge gaps, contradictions and assumptions. The realisation of this is disrupts equilibrium, and the group will attempt to restore equilibrium by trying to find solutions to the problem. This disruption of equilibrium is termed cognitive conflict and the actions of the group in trying to answer their questions restores equilibrium. This is the essence behind cognitive development theory. A blog group or community of practice, therefore, is a social learning group. Hence, blogging within a group that you grow and trust and respect is a great way to get answers to questions and to learn more about your professional practice.

Just about any learning challenge can be entered into a BLOG with the hopes that your community of practice will support you in looking at ways of managing the situation.? here are some examples:

• Difficult cases (health care, law , business) - support with the reasoning process
• Ethical dilemmas - brainstorming options
• Managing interpersonal conflict - brainstorming options
• Emotional support - words of encouragement
• Requests for information and resources to support reasoning

How does blogging fit into a fieldwork program?

Fieldwork experience offers students the opportunity to integrate their academic knowledge into the practical environment. Many mistakes are often made in the practical environment because individuals are applying theory to practice. Quite often theory in its ideal form does not fit with the less than ideal practical environment. Here is a clinical example:

A student learns all about how to assess a patient with a Rotator Cuff injury. A variety of key tests are learned and practiced with normal subjects at University. When the student experiences a real client with an acute rotator cuff injury, they find that many of the tests they learned cannot be applied because the patient has too much pain. Attempts to apply the tests fail, the student gets frustrated because they can't properly diagnose the client and the patient has increased pain from being handled too much. By reflecting on this experience the student learns that perhaps in an acute state these tests are inappropriate and other intervention is needed. By blogging this experience, other peers who have seen patients with a more chronic rotator cuff condition share their experiences, and note that the tests become more appropriate as pain subsides. Everyone learns because the initial blog invokes thinking and sharing of what knows. This information helps to inform others who do not have this insight yet. Learning happens all around and clinical reasoning, and hopefully performance, improves.

By blogging thoughts and challenges about difficult events in professional practice experience, students and new graduates in the health sciences, law, engineering, education etc... can use their peers and community of practice to deepen their insights about professional practice. The movement towards competency is accelerated and errors in professional reasoning can be minimised. It all aligns with notions of social learning theory, cognitive development theory and constructivist learning theory. Use others to deepen your understanding of your own practice.

This takes trust and an element of self -disclosure. Creating this trust takes time.

Using Blogs to Promote Professional Practice

My interest is in peer assisted learning and how this strategy supports professional development. I have a health care and management background and I advise programs and facilities on how to build learning systems that promote professional development and learning. I became interested in blogs because I see them as a powerful learning community tool. By journalling, and reflecting on practice in an experiential way, the opportunity to learn about one's own professional practice can be augmented using Blogs as a strategy.

If you don't know what a blog is then I would suggest you orient yourself to this web based technology by visiting the following site.

http://www.blogger.com

If we look at the reasoning process in more detail we can identify three essential components that drive professional practice. These three components are knowledge, cognition and metacognition. Professional competency requires having a good knowledge base and the good cognitive skills that enable you to manipulate, use and synthesize the knowledge. However, in order to improve one's competency you also need strong metacognitive or self-evaluation skills. If we integrate this notion of self evaluation into an experiential learning cycle, you can see how excellent practice is developed. Figure 1 illustrates this concept further.




Figure 1 illustrates how the experiential learning cycle and blogging promotes expertise. After each professional practice experience, reflection should take place. This can be done through thinking about practice, writing things in a journal, or better yet, entering reflective comments into a blog (especially if the learning situation is a complex one). By blogging these comments, others can read your thoughts and provide further information on your thinking. In particular, identifying things that you may have missed or did not consider. Your blogging partner, or community of practice, becomes your coaching community and help you to make more grounded and informed conclusions about your experience, which allows you to apply the learning to the next experience. The cycle then repeats itself and you eventually reach where you want to be with respect to your professional competence. The model works and I have attached a list of my publications to further substantiate why coaching and reflective practice is important for professional development.

Publications

Ladyshewsky R. (2006) Building cooperation in peer coaching relationships: understanding the relationships between reward structured, learner preparedness, coaching skill and learner engagement. Physiotherapy. 92:1;4-10.

Ladyshewsky R. (2006) Increasing Transfer of Training with Peer Coaching: From Theory to Practice. In. Evidence-Based Coaching: Volume 2; Theory, research and practice in the behavioural sciences. (Cavanagh M, Grant A., & Kemp T. Eds.). Australian Academic Press, Bowen Hills Qld. Australia. IN PRESS

Ladyshewsky R, Ryan J. (2006) Peer Coaching and Reflective Practice in Authentic Business Contexts: A Strategy to Enhance Competency in Post-Graduate Business Students. In Authentic Learning Environments in Higher Education. Herrignton A. & Herrington J. Eds. Hershey Pennsylvania, Idea Group Publishing. Pp.61-75.

Ladyshewsky, R. (2006) Peer coaching: a constructivist methodology for enhancing critical thinking in post-graduate business education. Higher Education Research and Development., 25:1;67-84.

Ladyshewsky R, Varey W. (2005) Peer Coaching: A practical model to support constructivist learning methods in the development of managerial competency. In. Evidence-Based Coaching: Volume 1; Theory, research and practice in the behavioural sciences. (Cavanagh M, Grant A., & Kemp T. Eds.). Australian Academic Press, Bowen Hills Qld. Australia. Pp. 171-182.

Ladyshewsky R. (2004) The impact of peer coaching on the clinical reasoning of the novice practitioner. Physiotherapy Canada. 56(1), 15-25.

Ladyshewsky R. (2004) E-learning compared with face to face: Differences in the academic achievement of postgraduate business students. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 20:3;316-336.

Ladyshewsky R (2002) A Quasi-experimental study of the differences in performance and clinical reasoning using individual learning versus reciprocal peer coaching. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. 18:1;17-31.

Ladyshewsky R, (2001) Reciprocal Peer Coaching: A strategy for training and development in professional disciplines. Higher Education and Research Development Society of AustralAsia, Canberra.

Ladyshewsky R, (2000) Peer Assisted Learning in Clinical Education: A Review of Terms and Learning Principles. Journal of Physical Therapy Education. 14:2 (15-22)

Ladyshewsky R, Baker R, Jones M. (2000) Peer Coaching to Generate Clinical Reasoning Skills. In, Higgs J, Jones M (Eds.) Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions, Second Edition. London, Butterworth and Heinemann Ltd. pp. 283-289.

Ladyshewsky R, Barrie S, Drake V. (1998) A Comparison of Productivity and Learning Outcome in Individual and Cooperative Physical Therapy Clinical Education Models. Physical Therapy 78:12;1288-1301.

Ladyshewsky, R. & Gotjamanos E: (1997). Communication Skill Development In Health Professional Education: The use of standardised patients in combination with a peer assessment strategy. Journal of Allied Health Fall:26:4;177-186.

Ladyshewsky R, Drake V. (1997) Co-operative Learning in Clinical Education. In Butorac A. (Ed.) Quality in Practice: Teaching and Staff Development Projects 1996. pp.99-108.

Ladyshewsky, R: (1995) Enhancing Service Productivity in Acute Inpatient Settings using a Collaborative Clinical Education Model. Physical Therapy, 75:6, 503-510.

DeClute, J., Ladyshewsky, R: (1993) Enhancing Clinical Competence Using a Collaborative Clinical Educational Model. Physical Therapy, 73:10, 683-697.

Ladyshewsky, R: (1993) Clinical Teaching and the 2:1 Student to Clinical Instructor Ratio. Journal of Physical Therapy Education, 7:1, 31-35.