Oddone-Paolucci, ElizabethOwen, Jeffrey Michael2020-07-292020-07-292020-07-24Owen, J. M. (2020). A Clinical Educator Needs Assessment in Athletic Therapy (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112343Problem: Canadian athletic therapy (AT) education is embracing major pedagogical change in transitioning to competency-based education (CBE). The national certification process has recently undergone substantial, and somewhat controversial, changes. Furthermore, new entry-level competencies have been developed for teaching and assessment. A pivotal component of AT education consists of longitudinal placements in the clinic and field contexts of AT. Clinical educators are volunteers, and primarily Certified Athletic Therapists, typically lacking pedagogical experience. Moreover, there appear to be no standardized practices across institutions for supervisory development. There is an absence of published research related to Canadian AT clinical education. Furthermore, clinical educator needs assessments across health professions education have employed various methods. Therefore, this study used a novel mixed-methods approach to understand Canadian AT clinical educators’ needs entering CBE. Method of Study: Interviews (n = 14) and a subsequent survey (n = 123) involving Canadian AT clinical educators were employed within a preplanned exploratory sequential mixed design (Tashakkori et al., 2012). The initial qualitative analysis involved conceptually mapping the content of responses using directed content analysis. The corresponding findings informed survey design. Three data strands resulted from the subsequent analyses. First, the interview findings related to supervisory role were analyzed using phenomenography to discern the different ways of understanding the role. Second, the conceptual map was revisited to identify strengths and barriers to role fulfilment. Third, valued and necessary development topics were identified from the survey results. Finally, the interpretations of the three data strands were mixed, incorporating other relevant findings, to develop AT supervisory support recommendations for CBE. Conclusions: Four different AT clinical educator role conceptualizations were discovered that were hierarchically related, which reflected the extent of variation perceived among six aspects of AT supervision. These findings, combined with three valued and necessary pedagogical skill topics, represent a valuable starting point for AT supervisory development, for which there was high interest. The strengths and barriers informed 14 considerations related to clinical educators’ potential capacity. Lastly, the 13 supervisory support recommendations developed from the clinical educator findings may aid the Canadian AT program directors with transitioning to CBE.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Athletic TherapyEducationNeeds AssessmentClinical EducatorHealth Professions EducationMedical EducationCompetency-based EducationMixed MethodsPhenomenographyFaculty DevelopmentRoleEducationEducation--Social Sciencesmaster thesis10.11575/PRISM/38046