Barredo R, Tenpenny K; Kaskaskia College, Centralia, IL. RBarredo@kaskaskia.edu.

PURPOSE: The purposes of the study were to identify and describe emergent themes common across the experiences of students who have undergone disability field exercises, and to determine if phases of learning could be extracted from student papers written about their experiences from the exercise. SUBJECTS: Reflection papers of thirty-six students from the graduating classes of 2000, 2001, and 2002 were used in the study. Thirty-two of the students were female and four students were male. METHODS: The study was conducted using action research. The first phase utilized an inductive approach of determining possible themes that may emerge from the experiences of the students with the disability field exercise. Activities in this phase consisted of brainstorming of possible themes and open coding of responses. The second phase was a retrospective study of the reflection papers of students who have undergone the disability field exercise. Thirty-six reflection papers were reviewed by the faculty members and analyzed not only for the occurrence of the identified themes, but also for the possible presence of sequential phases of learning. ANALYSIS: Analysis of the first phase of the study involved open coding of responses from the brainstorming of emergent themes. During this phase of the study, five themes emerged: dissonance in student expectations prior to and during the conduct of the exercise, dissent from friends and family on the assumption of the role of the disabled by the student, student recognition of the impact of disability on their personal lives and support systems, realization of the difficulties and challenges of individuals with disability, and personal reactions to the exercise. Analysis of the second phase of the study involved a structural analysis of the content of the reflection papers for the presence of the themes identified in the previous phase. A frequency count was used to determine how many of the papers reflected the extracted themes. CONCLUSIONS: The most frequently occurring themes that emerged from the reflection papers were the dissonance in student expectations prior to and during the conduct of the exercise, the student recognition of the impact of disability on their personal lives and support systems, and the realization of the difficulties and challenges of individuals with disabilities. These three themes also followed the same order when presented in the reflection papers. FUNDING SOURCE: None.

Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Therapy Association

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