What's next - A critical physiotherapy course perhaps?
Albert Bierstadt - Looking Down Yosemite Valley
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 course on critical thinking: experts, novices, and the people in the middle, who may have had a taste of critical thinking but want more.
It's this latter group that we think are the obvious starting point for the first course, because they probably won't need to be convinced of the benefits of critical thinking and may have the passion to find out something new.
The course should demystify the theory and philosophy of critical thinking and be practical and useful for clinicians, teachers, researchers and students.
And it should reflect the values of the CPN by being a safe space for people to explore ideas and ways of thinking that might be unusual or challenging for 'mainstream' physiotherapists.
We talked about how the course ought to explore the critical history of physiotherapy, and have some foundational topics and authors, but that these should be delivered in an accessible way.
And we discussed how it might run, perhaps with a primer weekend as a taster, followed by a longer course, delivered on-line and affordable for everyone.
We'll meet again in a months' time to talk more about the design and delivery of the course. We have a standing invitation from Physiopedia to host the course, so it really feels like an idea whose time has now come.
So if this sounds like something you'd like to be involved in - either as a designer, faciliatator or participant - then let me know (david.nicholls@aut.ac.nz), and I'll add you to the contact list.