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Occupational therapy students’ paradigms: A passage from beholder to practitioner
Author(s) -
Björklund Anita
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
australian occupational therapy journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.595
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1440-1630
pISSN - 0045-0766
DOI - 10.1046/j.1440-1630.2000.00212.x
Subject(s) - occupational therapy , occupational science , perspective (graphical) , psychology , medical education , action (physics) , psychotherapist , medicine , psychiatry , artificial intelligence , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics
The present study explores the development of occupational therapist paradigms among occupational therapy students at the Occupational Therapy Educational Program at the University College of Health Sciences, Jönköping, Sweden. The study is an explorative, comparative study of nearly qualified (last year) and newly enrolled (first week) occupational therapy students’ world views and field of action views regarding occupational therapy. The students answered essay questions on paradigmatic matters, and their answers were analysed qualitatively. A study structure comprising three themes with appurtenant categories allowed comparisons between the two groups of students. A major finding was that the nearly qualified occupational therapy students’ notions (in contrast to those of the newly enrolled students) gave expression to a more holistic health perspective in which there were numerous examples of interrelations between themes belonging to different paradigm components. According to Törnebohm interrelations between different paradigm components are characteristic of paradigms.