Facilitating student learning on placements

As clinical educator you will be fulfilling various roles. As discussed in Part One of this resource kit, those roles comprise:

Manager, Observer, Instructor, Counsellor, Assessor and Feedback provider (Best & Rose, 1996, as cited in Fitzgerald, 2007, March) as well as

Facilitator, Role model, Mentor, Motivator, Consultant to Learning and Clinical Skills Educator (J, Copley; S, Bartholomai; K, Adam; N, Flynn, personal communication, May–June, 2007)

The methods you use for providing education may change for each of these various roles as well for the different tasks and different stages of the student’s professional development.

We know that adults learn differently from children and teens. Adults approach a learning situation with different life experiences, motivational levels, barriers and incentives, learning styles and also, they learn at different speeds (Lieb,1991).

It can be useful for clinical educators to understand how adults learn in order to facilitate self-directed, internally motivated, responsible, problem-based and reflective learning practices.