The intentional fieldwork educational model (IFWEM) was developed by E. Joy Crawford and Nadine Hanner to “guide the fieldwork educator through the fieldwork educational process that is intentional and individualized for each student” (Crawford & Hanner, 2022, p. 3). This blog post will highlight the features of the IFWEM and how you can apply it to students by providing a recap of the article The Intentional Fieldwork Education Model: Guiding Fieldwork Educators Toward Intentionality and Competency to Enhance Student Learning (Crawford & Hanner, 2022).
This model aligns with many of the occupational therapy models, frameworks, and theories that we already know:
- Person, environment, occupational performance (PEOP) model: the IFWEM focuses on the complex factors that impacts engagement in the occupation of fieldwork educator or student
- Experiential learning theory: the IFWEM prompts fieldwork educators to enhance and promote student learning through intentional and individualized learning opportunities
- Transformative learning theory: the IFWEM challenges fieldwork educators to think about the fieldwork process and their role as an educator
Applying the Intentional Fieldwork Education Model to the role as fieldwork educator
- Reflect on your and your students’ personal and contextual factors. This can help you, as the educator, identify possible facilitators and barriers to the fieldwork experience and adapt to them.
- Modify your teaching-learning experience based on the needs of the student(s) and their response to the fieldwork experience. Knowing your teaching style, communication preferences, and supervision style ahead of time can be helpful to start off strong with your student.
- Establish a collaborative relationship with your student(s) by introducing them to the workplace culture, acknowledge and respond to changes that may occur, and identify roles early on in the fieldwork placement.
- Provide timely, factual, constructive, and specific feedback. This can help establish your collaborative relationship with the student and communicate expectations throughout the entire rotation.
- Appropriately grade learning activities to provide the just-right challenge. This will vary from student to student, making it a very individualized approach.
- Take advantage of teachable moments. This can be through client cases, interactions with coworkers, shadowing different therapists or units, etc.
The IFWEM is still a relatively new model and its effectiveness is still being determined. Many components of this model may already be put into place in your practice! Using your own clinical reasoning can help you incorporate this model into your practice to best fit the needs of your student. Overall, this is a useful model to consider as a new and seasoned fieldwork educator.
Written by Gianna Martello, OTS
References
Crawford, E. J. & Hanner, N. (2022). The intentional fieldwork education model: Guiding fieldwork educators towards intentionality and competency to enhance student learning. Journal of Occupational Therapy Education, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.26681/jote.2022.060115