| Portfolio Approach to Learning |
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Go to the Online Tutorial on building your portfolio >> The definition and unification of standards, curriculums, competencies and professional profiles is an important issue to sports physiotherapists. This underlies the SPA project, with one of its main outputs being an audit toolkit. The aim is to utilise this to adopt a portfolio approach to work-based learning. The audit toolkit will be piloted in both the workplace and university setting, to ascertain whether an accreditation model can be used to evaluate both formal and non formal learning. The non formal workplace testing will adopt a portfolio approach to assessing learning. Testing of the audit toolkit will commence in March 2006 and conclude at the end of December 2006. Use of portfolios is being promoted as a means to encourage continuous professional development in a structured manner. This will help further skills, knowledge, practice, clinical judgement and clinical decision making for life long learning. It is hoped that it will come to be used as one method for evidencing common competencies and standards for registration to the International Federation of Sports Physiotherapy. Portfolios can be used not only to provide evidence of skills, but also by sports physiotherapists for sports physiotherapists. They may be used in annual appraisal, to self benchmark again competencies, to identify learning needs and formulate learning plans. It is also envisaged it will be possible to submit them to universities to gain assessment for credits at Masters level as evidence of prior experiential learning. Finally, they can be used alongside or in place of formal learning to promote fitness for practice and place value on learning in the workplace. The expected result of the toolkit testing is a body of evidence to support its use as a valid method for the accreditation of Sports Physiotherapists, thus providing a test tool for accrediting both formal and non-formal learning post-graduation. Video master classes will be held on the web to facilitate use of the portfolio approach in evaluation of the tool in non formal settings. This class will include partners, experts, and sports physiotherapists from the membership of the International Federation of Sports Physiotherapy. The portfolio provides evidence that the sports physiotherapist has met agreed standards of proficiency. It is likely that a portfolio will demonstrate this in a number of ways, explicit to different competencies. Once the audit tools are adopted, they will be tested against a post-basic and postgraduate programme of education (pilot for formal learning in the Netherlands by the Hogeschool Utrecht) and also with portfolio development (pilot with the National Sports Academy (NSA) in Bulgaria for non-formal workplace learning). Students and sports physiotherapists will be asked to use the portfolio and to collect their documentation to search evidence of compliance with the standards. For further information and some examples of portfolios see: The SPA project benefits from the input of a group of sports physiotherapists working with athletes at different levels of sport, as well as in the field of general sports injury prevention. They are consulted about project documentation, as the group whom the portfolio based learning and assessment will most affect. For the purpose of portfolio development, the project envisages the organisation of a Workshop by the NSA with the above-mentioned group of sports physiotherapists. This will help acquaint them with its essence and way of implementation. After the final approval of the portfolio by all the partners it shall be tested with the sports physiotherapists for non formal learning. Dissemination/ consultation:The project team also plan to organise seminars with representatives from the Bulgarian Ministry of Youth and Sport, the Bulgarian Olympic Committee, owners of fitness centres, Chairmen of sport federations and organizations, coaches and athletes. In this vein a round table was organized by the NSA with the participation of representatives from the Bulgarian Ministries of Youth and Sport; Health; and Education. SPA partner QMUC will offer an online course on portfolio development in the future. |
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