There have been a few occasions over the last few months when people within the Critical Physiotherapy Network have been asked to do more for physiotherapy. The first time happened after our CPN Salon in Cape Town last year. Our esteemed colleague Professor Dina Brooks began the discussion by asking the CPN to do more to help mainstream physiotherapists make complex theories and philosophies more accessible. In her Reflections of a quantitative researcher on the CPN Salon, posted in July last year, Dina argued that the CPN risked functioning like a 'club' that excluded those who didn't subscribe to its principles. One of Dina's arguments at the time was that the CPN should build … [Read more...] about What should critical physiotherapy do for you?
What’s next – A critical physiotherapy course perhaps?
One thing you can definitely say about the CPN is that we like a project. We try to keep a lot of things consistent (blogging, meetings, social media, etc), but also run large projects in the background (collaborative articles, presentations and books). And having just published Manipulating practices, it's time to think what's next. We've been talking for some time about developing an on-line international course in critical thinking, but until this week it was only the germ of an idea. Yesterday I hosted a video conference with some members from the CPN, to talk about what a course might look like. Here were our preliminary thoughts: There are probably three audiences for a … [Read more...] about What’s next – A critical physiotherapy course perhaps?
Pushing at open doors
I have had the good fortune to spend time this last week with one of the world's foremost digital education specialists. Steve Wheeler is someone who has been at the forefront of educational innovation for over a decade now, and he spent last week and this week at AUT working with colleagues in my school. The highlight of his visit so far, for me at least, was a study day that we held over the weekend to look at 21st first century education. We spent the morning at a new school that has embraced the idea flexible learning environments (FLEs). Teaching at my university is often anything but flexible, and classrooms, curricula, and teaching and learning practices often look more rigid the … [Read more...] about Pushing at open doors
30 Days of September: Day 26
Today's image was suggested by Sue Adstrum. Click on the image to open it to full size. You can then save it and turn it into a desktop background by following these brief instructions. … [Read more...] about 30 Days of September: Day 26
A critical thinking sandpit exercise
It's hard sometimes to 'see' your own profession critically. Where do you start? What do you look for? How do you know that you've 'found' it? But if you're going to critically analyse your practice, having the ability to see what's normally in plain sight is a good skill to learn. There's an activity I do with PG students that I use to help them identify some of the things that underpin physiotherapy practice, so I thought I'd share it with you here and see if it resonates with you. (If you click to open this blogpost and scroll to the bottom, there's a comments box you can use if you have any particular thoughts you'd like to share). Step 1 - go into an image search engine, … [Read more...] about A critical thinking sandpit exercise
Creativity in physiotherapy
Anyone who lives with, knows, or has trained as an artist will be painfully aware of how lacking in creativity a lot of physiotherapy education and practice is. My brother is a photographer and a teacher, and I am frequently reminded of how differently he responds to things. Where he often thinks like an artist, I often default to the kinds of design-thinking that Grace Jeffers talks about when she says that "Design thinking is about solving a problem, but art thinking is about feeling your way to a solution" (link). It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with the way physiotherapists are trained to think - there's certainly a lot to be said for the kinds of deductive … [Read more...] about Creativity in physiotherapy
New physiotherapy – 7 ways to change the world
I read something about critical theory this morning that made me think about a couple of recent posts on the future of physiotherapy. In the piece, the author was taking critical theorists to task for attempting to ‘demystify’ the social world without proposing solutions. People, she argued, want attractive alternatives and a sense that utopia, or at least the hope of a better life, might be possible. This is a powerful argument that I don’t entirely agree with, but it did make me think about Roger Kerry’s recent blogpost ‘Physio will eat itself’, which followed my own question of whether we would disestablish physiotherapy as a profession if it were in the best interests of patients or … [Read more...] about New physiotherapy – 7 ways to change the world