Augmenting post-practicum experiences: Purposes and practices

Abstract

This chapter sets out and discusses the nature and role of post-practicum experiences. This includes the educational purposes they can secure through work-integrated learning experiences, as they are provided for health- and social care students. This discussion includes making a distinction between what constitutes work-integrated learning and work-integrated education and consideration of and how and why practice-based experiences need to be augmented to secure effective learning outcomes for students. Earlier studies indicate the need to prepare students for practice-based experiences, support them during those experiences, and then identify ways of enriching the experiences once they have been completed. The particular focus here is on the rationale for providing post-practicum interventions, the particular purposes to which they can be directed, and how these experiences can be made effective. Central to this is the importance of finding ways to integrate students’ experiences in the two different kinds of settings (i.e. clinical practice and classroom) through reconciling the contributions of these experiences as directed towards achieving the outcomes of students’ programmes, that is, integrating distinct learning experiences. Reference is made here to conceptions of integration or reconciliation of those experiences and how different conceptions come to shape the sorts of educational interventions that could be selected: work-integrated education. This discussion extends to the organisation and provision of experiences (i.e. the curriculum) as well as the ways in which educators or clinical practitioners can come to enrich those experiences (i.e. pedagogic practices). Not being constrained by a requirement for the interventions to be led by a more informed partner (e.g. teacher or clinician) is salient to these discussions. Instead, there is a need to be inclusive of how group, individual, or peer-led processes can be helpful in engaging students to utilise their experiences and those of others fully to promote their learning.