A Process Framework for the Education-Focused Capstone: Supporting Expansion and Sustainable Outcomes

Abstract

This article aims to share a process framework created to guide entry-level occupational therapy doctoral programs in operationalizing and expanding the scope of the education-focused capstone described by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE®).The impetus for this work was the completion of a professional development, education-focused capstone that proved to be novel, sustainable, and transformative for the capstone team, including the student, faculty mentor, site mentor, and doctoral capstone coordinator. This capstone ultimately created a professional development course covering the social determinants of health for occupational therapy practitioners, now offered through the American Occupational Therapy Association. Due to the lack of published guidance for this type of capstone project, the road from ideation to creation had a larger learning curve than the team anticipated. Following the completion of the capstone, the team performed a 3-month retrospective analysis through reflection, discussion, literature review, and journaling during weekly meetings to uncover facilitators, barriers, key takeaways, and themes. The team posited that the methods were grounded and reproducible and created the Education-Focused Capstone Framework to assist other capstone teams interested in similar expansion of the education-focused capstone. This framework was built on an understanding of Standards, current literature, and theories of transformative learning and heutagogy.

Keywords

• occupational therapy
• capstone
• education
• professional development
• process framework