Arbetsterapeuters pedagogiska förhållningssätt i gruppverksamhet - en kvalitativ studie
The occupational therapist uses meaningful activities to promote health and accomplish functional progress. The professional role is to support and enable for the client to change his/her life. One way to accomplish this is to use the group as a tool. Knowledge is needed about how learning works and which teaching methods exist to promote learning, so it is adapted after the clients´ personal way of learning. The aim of this study was to investigate which pedagogical approaches occupational therapists use in group activities. Interviews were conducted with ten occupational therapists in the southern part of Sweden. During the qualitative data analysis, three different approaches to learning emerged among the interviewed occupational therapists. The leader-centred approach meant that the occupational therapist was authoritarian and controlled the group by giving instructions. In the client-centred approach the occupational therapist first let the clients test the activity and then gave feedback. In the group-centred approach the occupational therapist had a flexible role and let the group work independently. The occupational therapists that took part in this study used one of these three approaches or a combination of these. Clear traces of different educationalists can be found in the approaches. The authors maintain that the need of mapping the use of pedagogy is of great importance since it is a basic ability to able to reach the clients with information in the best way.