Athletic Training and Physical Therapy Junior Faculty Member Preparation: Perceptions of Doctoral Programs and Clinical Practice

Background: Institutions of higher education suffer from a shortage of appropriately prepared faculty members in athletic training and physical therapy programs. Both professional programs have recently undergone curricular reform and degree change. We sought gain an understanding of the preparation mechanisms experienced by athletic training and physical therapy practitioners for their junior faculty positions. Method: Twenty-six athletic trainers and physical therapists participated in this phenomenological study. Data from one-on-one phone interviews were analyzed following the inductive process of interpretive phenomenological analysis. Content experts, pilot interviews, multiple analysts and member checking ensured trustworthiness. Results: Findings indicate two primary mechanisms prepared the practitioners to become junior faculty members: doctoral degree programs and clinical practice. Doctoral degree programs did not provide experiences for all future faculty roles. Hands-on patient care practice provided participants the context for their teaching and confidence in knowledge aptitude. Conclusion: Doctoral institutions should provide a variety of hands on active learning experiences to doctoral students. Future faculty members can maximize the amount of time they provide clinical care to patients, following the attainment of their professional credential. Clinical competence and proficiency will serve as the foundational basis for their future teaching endeavors and may increase credibility and respect

The Adaptive Military Transition Theory: Supporting Military Students in Academic Environments

On August 1, 2009, a radically different and more financially generous GI Bill, the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, took effect, with potential implication for institutions of higher education (Radford, 2009). In conjunction with expanded education benefits and the current drawdown of military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, institutions of higher education are ill-prepared to support the transition of a student population with comprehensive psychological, physiological, and social needs. A transition, broadly, is any event, or non-event, that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions, and roles (Schlossberg, Waters, & Goodman, 1995). Using Schlossberg\u27s Adult Transition Theory (Schlossberg, 1981, 1984) as the initial lens, this study sought to describe the transitional experience and emergent transitional stages of military students enrolled at a community college in the Northeast. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, this two-phase mixed method design employed a sequential explanatory strategy employing a profile questionnaire and individual semi-structured interviews (N=11). Based on profile data, participants were purposefully selected for interviews representing the stages of Schlossberg\u27s Adult Transition Theory. In the absence of dedicated research on military student development, an additional purpose of this study was to apply a grounded theory approach to support theory development. The goal of grounded theory is to generate a theory around a core category, which represents a pattern of behavior relevant for persons involved in the study (Beck, 2011, Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The research questions that guided the study were: (1) How do military students describe their transition experience from the military to higher education? (2) What is the transitional process that military students exhibit when acclimating to an academic environment? This research identified themes including participants\u27 appreciation for the military, environmental acclimation, perceptions of academic environment, and their articulation of their futures. These themes identified and supported individual transition stages as they experienced environmental and cultural change. The findings of this study, the Adaptive Military Transition Theory, and its representative model, may provide staff, faculty, and administration with strategies that account for the myriad challenges that this population face as they transition from military to academic culture

Recent Developments in Military-Connected Student Research

Introduction Military-connected students and student veterans attend 96% of all institutions of higher education (Queen & Lewis, 2014) and comprise more than 5% of students nationally (Radford, Bentz, Dekker, & Paslov, 2016). As this population increases, so too do contributions to the body of scholarship. Researchers, both those in their graduate studies and those with extensive experience, have furthered literature on student veterans in higher education. Over the past year, about two dozen studies have been published, almost half in scholarly journals and half in support of educational pursuits. Several authors explored student veterans through a strengths lens focused on student success. Others focused on nontraditional aspects of student veterans. Even if articles did not solely focus on student learning and development, the authors made practical recommendations that affect this competency. This review includes 13 recent studies and concludes with actionable recommendations for practitioners