Feedback practices as part of signature pedagogy for clinical placements

ABSTRACT

Signature pedagogies have been identified for medicine and nursing, however are not yet resolved for allied health. This paper explores feedback as part of the signature pedagogy for health professions clinical placements. It adopts a Theory of Practice Architectures perspective to understand feedback practices, within the context of placements which involved student mentoring. Two dominant practices were found to characterise feedback: creating a comfortable learning environment through feedback, and achieving feedback for learning. Analysis of the arrangements revealed the impact of educators’ caseloads in enabling, and more often, constraining feedback practices. Student mentors ensured that feedback occurred, suggesting that students can recognise and contribute to feedback as part of a signature pedagogy. Further, similarity across the two professions in this study supports the contention that there is a common signature pedagogy for clinical placements. This has implications for educator development and the role of students within workplace learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Feedback
• allied health
• workplace learning
• signature pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Collaborative Education Network [2017 Research Grant Scheme].

Notes on contributors

Merrolee Penman

Merrolee Penman is a Associate Professor in Work Integrated Learning in the School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney. Her interests include student learning in the clinical education environment, peer-assisted learning, feedback literacy and developing capacity for evaluative judgement and enabling clinical educators to transition to new models of clinical education.

Joanna Tai

Joanna Tai is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. Her interests include student perspectives on learning and assessment from university to the workplace, peer-assisted learning, feedback and assessment literacy, developing capacity for evaluative judgement, and research synthesis.

Tanya Thompson

Tanya Thompson is a Senior Physiotherapist in South Western Sydney Local Health District, Australia. Her interests include supporting innovative clinical education models, student learning and experience on clinical placement and how this translates to preparedness for professional practice.

Kate Thomson

Kate Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in Work Integrated Learning at the Faculty of Medicine and Health, the University of Sydney, Australia. She is interested in professional learning, specifically collaborative and informal workplace learning. Primarily, her research has centred on the professional learning of university teachers (i.e., academics and clinical educators), and her emerging interest is in developing future professionals through enhancing students’ learning before, during, and after their work-integrated learning placements.