Content area
Full text
Articles
Introduction
Job shadowing refers to 'extended time, often a full workday or several workdays, spent by a youth in a workplace accompanying an employee in the performance of his or her daily duties' (Luecking, 2009, p. 13). For pre-service rehabilitation professionals, job shadowing is their first exposure to their future career and predominantly orbits around the tasks associated with the position of case manager. Typical tasks include: providing emotional support to clients, interviewing individuals and families, developing written documentation of interactions, advocacy, identifying and coordinating community resources and responding to clients when conflicts arise (Herbert, Barrett, Evenson, & Jacob, 2010). These capabilities require understanding of specific services as well as the process required to coordinate all aspects of a case. The pedagogic value of job shadowing is explained by the learning gains that come with experiential learning: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation (Kolb, 1984).
Job Shadowing and Rehabilitation Education
Current rehabilitation practices infuse job shadowing, a best practice for young adults, when working with clients (Lozada, 2001). This practice is based on research-supported advantages of job shadowing for building commitment to an organisation (Earnest, Allen, & Landis, 2011) and acquisition of effective job performance skills (Gilboa, Shirom, Fried, & Cooper, 2008). Early realistic job shadowing experiences also increases involvement and engagement by participants (Bauer & Green, 1994). Moreover, job shadowing promotes interprofessional learning (Kidgell, 2009) through and acquisition of requisite professional predispositions important for overall future career choice (Winship, 2014). A typical job shadowing experience assignment involves rehabilitation students observing a professional during a typical workday inclusive of coordination of available services within agencies (Lozada, 2001). While the field of rehabilitation has largely supported job shadowing in assisting clients with career exploration and attitude development, there have been few educational research studies published that have examined the impact of brief job shadowing experience at the undergraduate level.
This study sought to provide preliminary evidence of the efficacy of a brief job shadowing intervention for undergraduate rehabilitation services students learning about the roles and functions of the case manager position.
Method
Research Design
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was determined to be an appropriate analysis tool based on the relatively small sample, allowing the researchers to perform an in-depth analysis with each...