Abstract:
As part of the curriculum for Community Based Rehabilitation,
final year students from the School of Audiology, Occupational Therapy
and Speech-Language Pathology are involved in service learning projects
in a semi rural area in KwaZulu-Natal. The project runs one day a week
from February to October and at the end of each day students submit
a journal in which they reflect on each days activities and their learning
experiences. The researchers used these journals as a source of data for
determining learning and attitude change in students over the entire
period of the practical. Method: 12 journals were randomly selected from
over a period of 5 years and including students from all three disciplines.
Content analysis was done to determine changing learning and attitudinal
patterns over the 7 month period of the practical. The results revealed a
rich pattern of emotional experiences coupled with positive attitudinal
change and suggest a valuable source of evaluating learning progress in
students.
