A qualitative exploration of chiropractic and physiotherapy teachers' experiences and conceptualizations of the educational environment.

OBJECTIVE

There has been increasing scholarly interest in the role of environments in health care professional education, and the value of these has been widely acknowledged as an influential factor in educational quality. However, little is known about how teachers experience the environment, and there is a recognizable absence of a perspective from chiropractic and physiotherapy faculties. The aim of this study was to explore and contrast chiropractic and physiotherapy teachers' experiences and conceptualizations of the meaning of the educational environment.

METHODS

In this qualitative study, we performed semistructured interviews with 14 teachers, purposefully selected to obtain richness, variation, and breadth in the data. The data were analyzed using inductive qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS

The most noteworthy findings were, first, that chiropractic teachers experienced the meaning of the environment as motivating a vocational practice and modeling ideal, supporting and managing stressed students, and including students in the community of chiropractors. Physiotherapy teachers experienced the meaning of the environment as putting the pedagogical vision into practice, balancing students' expectations, and providing the prerequisites to grow within the profession. Second, both groups of teachers held common conceptualizations of the constituents of the environment as physical, organizational, relational, communicational, and pedagogical; however, they attached different connotations to these dimensions.

CONCLUSION

The findings conveyed a variance in the experience of the meaning of the educational environment that can be attributed to contextual and cultural differences.