• Guide to Physical Therapist Practice                                   
• Normative Model of Physical Therapist Professional Education
• To meet the objectives set-forth in a. and b., physical therapists must have the requisite clinical strategies and techniques as well as pragmatic and interpersonal skills in order to communicate, collaborate, implement and coordinate services within a variety of health care settings.

Clinical decision-making

• Provision of physical therapy services includes clinical decision-making underlying the individualized evaluation and treatment process.  This includes, but is not limited to, patient/client problem identification, examination, evaluation, diagnosis, prognosis and intervention.  Students must become familiar with the components of these processes in both a generic and specialized sense.
• Recognizing that clinical decision-making occurs on a continuum from the novice to the experienced practitioner, the curriculum must provide the didactic, integrative seminars and clinical education experiences to foster this development.
• To address the dissonance the students experience between the “espoused theory” learned in the academic setting and actual clinical education experiences, learning must emphasize reconciliation between pragmatic and theoretical considerations.

Adult learner

• Students are mature adults who have previously demonstrated the ability to participate in a broad undergraduate education and may have demonstrated knowledge and skill in the work place.
• Students at the graduate level are adults with different needs and approaches to learning.  The curriculum should move beyond traditional teaching tactics to adjust to the diverse needs of the learner.
• Adult learners can assume varying degrees of responsibility for their own learning.  The curriculum should facilitate this process through faculty role-modeling, and by activities that facilitate ways of accessing and using information.
• Adult students enter graduate education as motivated learners with a self-selected career goal.  The curriculum needs to progress from the simple to the complex to allow students to use new and well-established skills to address novel, unexpected and increasingly complex situations.
• Adult learners are consumers of their educational system and must be included in formulation and evaluation of the system.

Professional education        

• Physical therapy has a unique body of knowledge that must be transmitted within a limited time frame to those who are entering the profession. Students must learn to manage their time in order to meet content requirements as well as analysis, synthesis and integration.
• Education of practice must include making connections across professions, placing the profession of physical therapy in a larger context.  Students must be provided with opportunities for interdisciplinary learning.
• Professional education must include ample time and opportunity to apply theories and skills to actual practice.
• The learning environment must include a variety of role-models who embody those qualities that are valued by the profession.
• The faculty is comprised of experienced practitioners who assume responsibility for transmitting the social values of the profession to the student.  This requires a collegial environment in which the teacher assumes the role of facilitator and mentor rather than the student’s only source of knowledge.

Service context

• Traditional health care facilities are no longer the only arenas of practice for physical therapists.  Students need to become familiar with a variety of existing and emerging practice settings.
• Health care is ever changing.  Students must become familiar with change as an environmental reality. In response, they learn ways of anticipating, planning for and responding to change.
• Physical therapists must engage in and respond to the varying demands of different situations.  Students must be prepared to translate physical therapy principles to provide both direct and indirect services.
• In the midst of reforms in health care, professional education must prepare students to respond to fiscal realities.  These realities demand that physical therapists be prepared to balance the issues of quality and quantity of service through evidence-based practice.

Society

• Membership in a profession carries privileges and responsibilities assigned to that profession by society.  These responsibilities include, but are not limited to, a need for adherence to ethical standards, which requires familiarization by the student.
• Students must acknowledge that the profession has made a covenant with society to approach every patient/client with the highest degree of integrity, to provide humane care to persons under their care and to respect the cultural diversity of individuals.