Exploring students’ perspectives on ‘contingent support’ in a broad interprofessional education programme

The interprofessional education (IPE) and practice field has been in a positive development over the past decades. However, there are still pedagogical challenges to overcome. There is a need for research that can contribute to a better understanding of teaching- and learning processes involved in IPE. This article reports from a study exploring students’ stories of the kind of contingent support they need to support their learning processes in a broad IPE programme focusing on children. The programme involves students across health-, social care-, and teacher educations. The study draws on survey data ( N = 499) and interview data ( N = 15) and makes use of concepts from the scaffolding literature in the investigations. A theoretical starting point used is that each student participating in IPE has an individual zone of proximal development (Vygotsky et al., 1978), but also that a group may have a joint zone. Results of the study suggest that for facilitators of IPE to provide contingent support in such a context, focus should both be placed on individual students, as well as on the group. Moreover, contingent support should be offered both prior to, as well as during, the students’ work in interprofessional learning groups to support their learning processes.