Educational Design Research on Person-Centred, Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Practice (IPECP): Exploring Work Processes of Educators to Identify Design Principles and Develop Guiding Materials

Within the rehabilitation sector, students and professionals collaborate interprofessionally when focusing on the functioning of patients. Developing and implementing person-centred, interprofessional education in an institution requires coordinated implementation actions across multiple divisions. The objectives of this study were twofold: firstly, to explore the work processes of educators who implement person-centred, interprofessional education for collaborative practice (IPECB) which, secondly, served to develop process guide materials for educators from various settings.

Educational Design Research was conducted in the Erasmus+ project INPRO from 2021 to 2023. It followed an iterative, process-oriented approach that consisted of four complementary workstreams: 1) Literature, needs, and collection of approaches; 2) IPECP design thinking and piloting with project stakeholders; 3) Process guide development and usability testing; 4) Exchange and refinement. A synthesis from each workstream’s findings served to explore the content and structure of process guide materials.

Three design topics emerged: a) ‘Facilitating Interprofessional Education in a Global Classroom Setting’; b) ‘Interlinking Higher Education and Rehabilitation Practice’; c) ‘Facilitating Interprofessional Collaborative Practice in Rehabilitation’. This developed theory shows that the needs of educators differed between higher education and rehabilitation settings. As a result, the process guide materials consist of context-specific content. The third topic showed links between the settings regarding the educators’ work process. These findings determined the structure of the process guides. Interlinkages bear a potential for facilitating the transition of educators and students from theory to practice. Future studies may explore the applicability of the findings to other settings and to collaborative (online) learning in general.