Using principles of Whole Brain® Thinking to transform radiographic clinical practice : an action research study

Abstract

As an inexperienced facilitator with a passion for education, research, and the field of radiography I identified an innovative idea to transform my practice as part of my professional development and role as a lecturer. This research focuses on implementing a professional development intervention aimed at improving Radiographic Clinical Practice. Radiographic Clinical Practice is a subject specialising in radiographic techniques for the demonstration of specific anatomical structures and pathology. Constructive academic contributions on holistic Whole Brain® facilitating learning in South Africa abound but a void was identified in its implementation in Radiographic Clinical Practice. Whole Brain® thinking is in principle, the way in which I choose to execute the learning task. As I have my own thinking preference, known as my comfort zone, the goal throughout the project was to facilitate learning tasks in a holistic Whole Brain® manner. Developing Whole Brain®-focused radiographers is imperative for the industry to be effective and efficient, while improving or maintaining the well-being and heath of the patients in an era of rapidly advancing technology (Dos Reis, Pires-Jorge, York, Flaction, Johansen, & Maehle, 2018:61). By using an action research design, I took responsibility for my own professional development in a self-regulated fashion – one’s ability to understand and control one’s own learning in practice. I improved the approach to my educational practice by facilitating the learning of radiography in a holistic Whole Brain® manner. A mixed methods approach was followed during data collection, analysis and interpretation. The fieldwork consisted of different questionnaires, observations, observation sheets and a reflective field notebook. These different data collection methods were implemented by various sources (participants, peers and myself) to augment the validity and reliability of the data and the interpretation, as recommended by Zohrabi (2013:254). Findings indicate that I did develop professionally and created learning opportunities for the participants to develop professionally.