Johansson publishes chapter on transformative learning

Charity Johansson, professor of physical therapy education, has authored the opening chapter of a new book, "Transformative Learning in Healthcare and Helping Professions Education: Building Resilient Professional Identities," edited by TJ Carter, CJ Boden, and K Peno.

The book explores the nature of professional identity formation amid the challenges of today’s stressful practice environments. In her chapter, “Therapists in the Making,” Johansson explores the transformation that takes place among physical therapy students who enter the highly competitive doctoral programs prepared to absorb vast amounts of knowledge, anticipating their graduation a few years later as healthcare’s experts in mobility.

What they often don’t expect, says Johansson, are the challenges to their understanding of who they are as professionals along the way—that the journey is not merely about an expansion of their existing knowledge and skills but a fundamental change in the way they understand healthcare and their place in it.

At the essence of this shift, she contends, is the understanding of their very purpose as physical therapists—of what it means to help.