Fieldwork education in Occupational Therapy provides students with the
opportunity to integrate theory learned at higher institutions with practical skills
and professional behaviour within real-life settings to become proficient
occupational therapists. Fieldwork supervisors are the key role players and
facilitators in realising the purpose of fieldwork education. To this end,
supervisors must exhibit effective characteristics of supervision in order to
provide quality and meaningful learning experiences for students. Concern has
been raised throughout literature about the characteristics that supervisors
display during fieldwork placements, because it has such a major influence on
studentsâ learning and experiences of fieldwork education.
Very little research has been done on fieldwork education of Occupational
Therapy in South Africa and none on the characteristics of supervisors and
supervision during fieldwork placements. This study aims to describe effective
and ineffective characteristics of supervisors and supervision in Occupational
Therapy fieldwork education at the UFS as identified by third and fourth year
Occupational Therapy students and supervisors.
These phenomena of supervisor and supervision characteristics have been
researched in several qualitative studies internationally from either the
supervisorsâ or the studentsâ perspective. In this study, a quantitative,
descriptive study design was used to gather information about effective and
ineffective characteristics of supervisors and supervision during Occupational
Therapy fieldwork education. The data collection instruments implemented
consisted of two similar self-report questionnaires: one for the students and one
for the supervisors.
The research population consisted of all the third and fourth year Occupational
Therapy students enrolled at the UFS in 2012 (a total of 69) as well as all the
supervisors involved in fieldwork training of these Occupational Therapy
students (a total of 41). The response rate for the students was 98.6% and for
the supervisors 100%. Effective supervision characteristics have been identified and described, with
specific emphasis on the main findings that reflect that a supervisor must be
competent, professional, approachable, considerate and knowledgeable about
what is expected from the student and must spend adequate time with the
student. Furthermore, the supervisor must provide sufficient guidelines, support,
guidance and feedback. Results were reported according to the five categories
used in the questionnaires, namely: interpersonal; curriculum; clinical and
professional; feedback and environment. Ineffective supervision characteristics
identified in this study were similar to those detected in international studies.
This study clearly indicates that supervisors viewed the limited time they had to
supervise students as a major cause of ineffective supervising. Additionally,
they had less than five years of supervision experience, which influenced the
effectiveness of their supervision characteristics negatively. An unexpected
finding of this study was the indication by supervisors that studentsâ attributes â
whether positive or negative â had been the biggest influence on the
supervision they provided during fieldwork education.
In conclusion, extensive recommendations were made to redress the ineffective
characteristics of supervision identified in this study as it pertains to students,
supervisors and the university. This study contributes to Occupational Therapyâs
body of knowledge with regard to supervision characteristics in fieldwork
education in a South African setting, which can be used as a base for future
research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-07042014-125704 |
| Date | 04 July 2014 |
| Creators | Hattingh, Rialda |
| Contributors | Dr S van Vuuren, Ms R Hough |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-07042014-125704/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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