Nardone MK; MPT Program of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers-Camden and the School of Education of the University of Delaware, Stratford, NJ. mnardone@umdnj.edu.

INTRODUCTION: Physical therapists develop competence in both the academic and clinical settings. During clinical education, students are challenged to participate more fully as members of the community of practice of physical therapy. PURPOSE: Physical therapy students may perform competently in the classroom and laboratory environment, but still have difficulty in demonstrating practical competence in the real world. The purpose of this project was to develop an understanding of how competence develops in the clinic utilizing the framework of situated cognition. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: Students are developing practitioners of physical therapy. They resemble apprentices (Lave, 1988) as they gradually develop into practitioners. Situated cognition theory provides a framework for analysis of development of competence in the real world. Students have specific classroom knowledge and skills which their supervising clinical instructors expect them to demonstrate; therefore, there are additional considerations that do not apply to the apprentices whom others have studied. SUBJECTS: Two students were observed as they participated in the real world of physical therapy practice. Both students were from the same university and both were completing their first clinical experience as a physical therapy student. One student was in a large acute care hospital in a metropolitan area. The other student affiliated in a suburban hospital-owned outpatient physical therapy clinic, which had previously been owned by her clinical instructor. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The paper uses a qualitative case study design. I interviewed the students and reviewed their journals, logs, and other artifacts. I observed their activities at the clinical sites. ANALYSES: Data from the observations, interviews, and artificact review were analyzed utilizing Bogdan and Biklen’s (1992) classification system. Each segment of data was coded and placed in a folder with other segments with the same code. Once the data has been sorted into folders, the data was analyzed for themes within each folder using Bogdan and Biklen's (1992) methodology. Triangulation of method was utilized. RESULTS: The clinical education experience mimics the apprenticeship (Lave, 1988). During the early part of the affiliation, the students participated in segments of the practice of physical therapy. As time progressed, they gradually became legitimate participants (Lave and Wenger, 1991). The students developed strategies which assisted them in connecting academic and clinical experiences and in demonstrating clinical competence. CONCLUSIONS: Situated cognition provides a useful perspective for examining the development of physical therapy entry level competence and describing characteristics of the clinical education environment. FUNDING SOURCE: None.

Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Therapy Association

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