‘I'm allowed to experiment’: the role of people with psychiatric disorders in facilitating students' learning

Fieldwork education brings students into close contact with the people who use occupational therapy services and is an important avenue for socializing students into professionally accepted views of, and behaviours towards, these people. Drawing on narrative data from a naturalistic study of nine Australian occupational therapy students' fieldwork experiences in psychiatric hospital settings, this paper explores the role of people with psychiatric disorders in facilitating students' learning. Two terms are used by the authors to represent students' understanding of these people for educational purposes, namely, as learning resources and as demonstration models. From students' narratives, examples of the attributes they sought to acquire and demonstrate through involvement with people with psychiatric disorders are discussed. There are indications from these data that students' educational needs may foster a view of people with psychiatric disorders as objects in the service of students' learning. Copyright © 1998 Whurr Publishers Ltd.