SchellConsulting

Below are six topics or areas where SchellConsulting consultants can work with you and your faculty. These areas can be mixed and matched for the purpose of customizing a workshop to suit the needs of your faculty and your programs. These topics can be delivered in a variety of formats such as workshops, lectures, institutes, or seminars. Telephone or real time net-video consultations are also available. The focus, structure, length, delivery, and assessment of a professional development activity can be customized to fit your specific situations. For assistance in setting up a workshop or seminar contact Dr. Barbara A. Boyt Schell, Ph.D., OTR/L, FAOTA. Dr. Schell can be contacted on e-mail at: bschell@brenau.edu. The Schell Consulting Telephone is 706-546-1249.

Over twenty-five years ago, works by Rogers, Mattingly and Fleming helped the profession focus on clinical reasoning. Since that time we have learned a great deal about the reasoning processes supporting professional practice.  These complex processes are multi-faceted, embedded in both personal and practice contexts and require a combination of experience and reflection to develop. Schell Consulting can provide you and your colleagues up to date information about the current state of the are, as well as opportunities for future research in practice and education.

Schell Consulting can assist you and your faculty as you seek to teach students principles of reflective practice. This can also be a topic for a professional development activity among faculty. Who are reflective practitioners? They are those that take time to reflect on current and future practice as professional OTs or teachers. Reflective practice is a way to metacognitively think about professional actions before, during and after practice. This requires instruction based on solid philosophic and theoretical assumptions. Reflective practice is also an artifact of professional reasoning. Ask your faculty to identify the evidence to support their actions. What is the quality of that evidence? Where does it come from? What level of proof must be obtained before such evidence is sufficiently reliable to support professional actions?

Clinical and professional reasoning involves many complex, multi-faceted processes which are embedded in both personal and practice contexts. Schell Consulting can help you and your colleagues examine your own practices to see if you are optimally supporting the development of reasoning in students and/or staff members. Workshops can be custom designed for clinical instructors about the nature of clinical and professional reasoning and implications for student supervision. For practice settings, consultation or workshops are available to assist managers and program coordinators to design meaningful programs to support staff members to gain expertise.  These programs can be customized to also support the attainment of advanced and specialty certifications thus gaining external recognition for staff members.

Schell Consulting can help you and your faculty think about the philosophic and theoretical assumptions that support your current educational programs. Alignment among philosophy, theory, instruction, & assessment is critical to obtaining the highest quality professional educational programs. Yet, it is very common for higher education programs to create curriculum from one set of assumptions, teach from a second, and assess from an entirely different paradigm. It is also quite common for these assumptions to “slip” as new faculty are hired or new trends appear in the professional literature. We can help as you and your faculty review these assumptions and work to create or re-create consistency and alignment across your instructional programs.

Schell Consulting is based on the assumption that learning is mostly social in nature. While acknowledging the importance of psychology to learning, our approach assumes that professional education is most effective when it is nested in the assumptions of authentic contexts and communities of like-minded individuals. Schell Consulting consultants can show how this approach is also a solid foundation for facilitation-type teaching where the expectation of higher order thinking and problem solving is present. These theories are also considered socialization theories. New members (novices) are socialized through learning the practices and culture of the profession. This approach to collaborative teaching also is effective as new professionals seek to make meaning and to establish their professional identities.

Dr. John Schell has developed an over-arching instructional model that weaves collaborative learning and teaching, socialization, and reflective practice. The model was recently published in Clinical & Professional Reasoning in Occupational Therapy (2008). The model assumes authentic experiences that are shared among teacher and students. From those experiences constructive instruction takes place. Next, students then articulate their currently level of knowledge through a variety of media. Finally, strategic reflection guides students through activities that encourage meaning making, high quality reasoning processes, and improved professional practices. More on this model can be seen at: http://jschell.myweb.uga.edu/discovery/theoretical_framework.html.