INFORMAL LEARNING OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPISTS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO FORMAL CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

Because there is increasing evidence that professionals prefer informal ways of learning, the purpose of this research was to study informal learning of occupational therapists within their work environments and find out what the relationship is to formal continuing professional education. An anthroethnographic research design was chosen to answer the following questions: (1) What are the major influences on informal learning within occupational therapy work settings? 82) What type of information is learned informally within work settings? (3) What is the relationship between informal learning in occupational therapy work settings and participation by occupational therapists in formal continuing education activities?;Whether occupational therapists decide to learn and how they learn is an extremely complex phenomenon. It involved personal, clinical, departmental, institutional, and out-of-institution influences. There were some indications that as the influence moved further from the individual there was less influence. Although personal influences were not quantified, they may be most important of all.;Occupational therapists preferred people resources over written resources, but there were many influences on that decision. Effective interpersonal relationships and self-confidence appear to be basic to using people resources.;Written resources were perceived as difficult to find, hard to read, and frequently not applicable to practice. Organization of written materials to obtain quick answers for practice appear to be needed.;The majority of the content learned informally involved program/treatment techniques and administration. Medical information and basic science material learned was significantly less than program/treatment techniques. The difference between the combination of administrative and program/treatment techniques and medical information and basic science was also significant. Medical information and basic science content may be learned best in more formal ways.;There was a close relationship between informal and formal continuing professional education activities. One facilitates the other. To resolve specific practice problems, seminars, workshops, and courses would appear to be more appropriate than conferences.