Since 2012, Occupational Therapy in Health Care has offered readers a feature that is specifically focused on pedagogies. Feedback from readers and authors support continued interest. The feature aims to support all levels of educators: experienced educators, guest lecturers, adjunct instructors, providers of in-service or non-credit training sessions and those who are transitioning into fulltime teaching roles. Our goal is to provide occupational therapy educators or practitioners with information about educational strategies or techniques that are grounded in theory and/or evidence. We strive to present materials in a pragmatic manner that is relevant to daily teaching and/or clinical practices.
In order to support the process of preparing a submission for this feature, we have revised the Guidelines for Instructional Insights manuscripts, as outlined below. Please note that these guidelines only apply to manuscripts submitted for this feature. We seek articles that follow the format outlined below.
All manuscripts should contain practical examples of educational strategies whose outcomes have been assessed through student performance, course evaluations, and student and/or peer feedback. Inclusion of visuals such as sample assignments or forms will be helpful as long as specific applications are offered in the text.
Manuscript format
Topic or issue or background
This introductory section establishes the need for the pedagogical strategy or innovation under consideration and locates the need within a specific educational context. In this section, the author(s) should:
| 1. | Describe a contemporary issue or concern of relevance to academic and/or clinical educators. While the issue may be of personal interest to the author, it should also be of broader interest to the educational community, as reflected in pedagogical and/or clinical literature.
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| 2. | Explain the issue or concern within a specific educational context clarifying both the educational setting and the level of instruction (e.g., first-year MS entry-level students, FW II OTA students, and advance-practice clinicians in a long-term care environment). | ||||||||||
Strategy or innovation
This section should describe the teaching strategy or innovation that has been used. In this section, the author(s) should:
| 1. | Describe the development and implementation of a specific educational technique, program, or idea, grounded in theory and evidence. | ||||
| 2. | Briefly discuss the theory and/or evidence supporting the idea. While the emphasis should be on the specific technique or idea, it must be grounded in credible literature (e.g., education, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, and medicine). The text should provide sufficient rationale to convince the editors and the reader that the strategy has merit and can be adopted for use in teaching a variety of content areas. Citations to the literature are expected to be in APA format and included at the end of the article. | ||||
| 3. | Whenever possible, the author should consider providing a figure or diagram to illustrate the strategy and its application(s) or implementation. | ||||
Outcomes
This section describes the assessment of educational outcomes used to evaluate the strategy or innovation. Even when only limited data is available, authors should strive to describe the assessment methods that were used to determine the efficacy of the teaching strategy or offer more possibilities for the reader to assess the outcomes. A variety of methods can be presented including student, peer, and/or chairperson feedback, faculty self-reflection, course evaluations, and other approaches to outcomes assessment. The goal is to provide sufficient information for the reader to make an informed decision about the efficacy of the approach and its relevance to their populations and contextual environments.
Additional resources
This section provides readers with a list of additional resources that they might wish to review as they prepare to incorporate the suggested teaching strategy into their repertoire. We like to think of this section as “how not to reinvent the wheel” or “where to ask the teaching question you didn't know you should ask.”
References
Authors should follow APA guidelines for all references.
We hope the goals of this column resonate with skilled and resourceful occupational therapy educators and that you will consider sharing your best teaching efforts with your peers. We look forward to reviewing your manuscripts!