A prospective study on the development of critical thinking skills for student prosthetists and orthotists in Hong Kong.
Wong MS. Prosthet Orthot Int. 2007 Jun;31(2):138-46.
Educational research comparisons between one discipline and another is oft
fraught with problems as comparing apples and oranges would exemplify. Only if a similar project was undertaken in the discipline of podiatry would there be a basis for real comparison.
This does not mean to say findings cannot be useful insights but definately total acceptance as applied to another discipline (wthout further investigation) should be done only with caution as conditons definately apply. Much of what is accepted in higher education as sound educational practice is based on pedogogy (the study of school
learning) whereas pod students are adults and androgogy (the study of adult learning) applies. The downside to the pedogogical approach is it revolves around a classroom and is teacher centric. Economically this is the cheapest way of imparting knowledge to groups of people and the driving reason for our existing curriculum models in univeristies.
However as Craig has commented there is more to liberalising adults than lectures on podiatry. Yet that continues to be the main focus in undergraduate curriculum. Life skills, like critical thinking remain ignored as undergraduates are pushed to consume more and more content detail. This is easy to justify by 'authorities'
because the qualified
pod may need this information to earn a living.
However to persue this approach to its
logical conclusion anything and everything
that relates to feet care could be a legitimate component of the official syllabus. Most podiatry undergraduate programs are over stuffed (and too long in my humble opinion).
I recently set my students a reflective exercise on Scope of practice and asked them to compare the last five years (four of which they have been training as undergraduates ) before projecting this onto a five year plan (ie what will they need to know in five years time to practice podiatry). The student comments suggested strongly they wanted to continue to do what they can do now but in the full knowledge they would be doing this
to the best of their ability as reflected in contmeporary best practice (ebp?). Similar findings were found in a national survey of pods (Australia) conducted by
Curtin Univ in preparation for
planning post graduate course.
It appears the
scope of podiatric practice has not changed in nearly half a century but in that time the profession has absorbed a myriad of techniques and processes which now seems to have become core curriculum considered essential to teach (despite evidence to show these are ubiquitously practised). Now there is an irony, the other timely component of our vocational degrees is competence training and supervised practice. Yet despite the new emphaisis placed on technique and process an absence of homogenous placement may fail to produce actual supervised practice. Under these circumstances it is easier to teach this new wave curriculum in the classroom but how much learning goes on is quite a different story. An absence of classroom research in podiatric education ensures we will never know.
There is a hidden curriculum which describes the elements of learning picked up informally (usually outwith the written 'official' curriculum) and many educators will hope they are achieving other objectives in their students behaviour such problem solving ability, critical descision making and practitioner reflection as the students progress in their charge. However unless this becomes part of the formal curriculum and guarentees every student experiences the same (equity), then
whatever teachers
hoped to achieve in liberalising their part of the course
may not be achievable because too much concentration is directed to ovefilling the undergraduate podiatry with irrelevant content.
It would appear from reading the paper other courses suffer the same fate.