Category: Altphysio
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Stories, not containers: What is a course?
We think of courses as containers; containers for the outcomes, content and assessments related to a topic. Students move through the course – from one concept to another – until they get to the assessment at the end, which signals the end of the course. The course is bound in time; it has a definite beginning…
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altPhysio | Describing a novel curriculum
I’ve spent the last 2 weeks or so trying to get my head around what a new curriculum might look like in practical terms, largely to the detriment of everything else that I’m supposed to be doing. It seems to be a harder problem than I anticipated (or maybe I’m just missing something). One of…
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Systematic constraints as “structure” for learning
Foucault said that the ideas we think are benign are often the most dangerous. If students accept and believe that the constraints we build around them (i.e. the curriculum) are beneficial for scaffolding their learning they will always be passive. Freire might say that we are oppressing – as opposed to liberating – them by providing…
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altPhysio | Time allocation
This is the fifth post in my altPhysio series on a physiotherapy school set about 10 years from now. The idea is to explore alternative approaches to education by questioning the most fundamental aspects of curriculum infrastructure. Asking what we think are the essential components and then looking at those ideas from a different perspective.…
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altPhysio | Technology as infrastructure
This is the fourth post in my altPhysio series, where I’m exploring alternative ways of thinking about a physiotherapy curriculum by imagining what a future school might look like. This post is a bit longer than other because this is an area I’m really interested in and spend a lot of time thinking about. I’ve also added more links…
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Towards a competency-based curriculum in physiotherapy
I’ve been thinking about the concept of competency based education (CBE) in relation to the altPhysio series that I’m busy with. I’m drawn to the idea of CBE but am aware that there are some criticisms against it, especially from a theoretical and pedagogical perspective. This post is a short note to clarify some of my…
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altPhysio | Personal reflection on the series
As part of the altPhysio series I’ll be writing a few reflective posts where I think out loud about the process of writing the series. This is really for my own benefit of documenting the process, so you may not find it very interesting. Just saying… Over the past 2 or 3 years I’ve been…
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altPhysio | Getting rid of modules
This is the third post in a series looking at the ideas and processes we take for granted in a mainstream physiotherapy curriculum. In the first post I looked at the background behind a decision to form a new kind of physiotherapy school, and then wrote a second post questioning the assumption that there is an…
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altPhysio | Creating value
This is the second post in a series of exploring what a next-generation physiotherapy school might look like. Many of the ideas are not fully formed and some have very little evidence to support them. This is OK. Push back is welcome. Here’s the second interview. Q: Now that you’ve provided the background and context for why…
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altPhysio | Background of the school
This is the first of a series of posts on a vision for what a new school of physiotherapy might look like if it was designed from scratch; what it could be if we left behind the legacy systems that almost all new programmes are built around. I’ve written the series as an interview set in 2025, a…