Application of Learning Theories to Professional Practice

Practitioners in various health professions often engage in teaching and learning roles, such as providing education to their clients, training a student during a clinical rotation, or educating their interdisciplinary teams about their discipline. In fact, it is now essential that health professionals engage in educational roles to provide and sustain high quality care. As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, so does the role of educator in order to best meet a variety of diverse needs across various practice settings. However, a majority of practitioners’ education is focused on their discipline specific knowledge and skills needed to effectively evaluate and treat clients; leaving less time to understand how to effectively teach or to understand how people actually learn.  This introductory course will be broad enough to (1) meet both of these needs or practitioners and educators and (2) to target many health professionals engaged in teaching and learning roles [e.g. occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, nursing]. The author will briefly introduce teaching and learning roles and discuss the importance of theory use to guide educational experiences. They will describe two relevant theories, give a picture of what these theories might look like in action, and apply each of these theories to actual practice and educational scenarios.