#9 Theme development and review

Stages three, four and five - searching for themes, reviewing the themes and naming the themes

I used a deductive (rather than inductive) approach to theme development. The sensitising concepts from my review of workplace learning theory (knowledge and skills, behaviours, student awarenesses and personal attributes) informed theme development somewhat and focused on preparedness. I therefore ignored data which wasn't focused on what it means to be well-prepared for workplace clinical training (WCT) e.g. talk of Covid-19 and it's impact on WCT, or how specific vet schools prepare their students for WCT.

I required all codes (preparedness characteristics) to fit into a theme for the purposes of the second part of this mixed methods study. During stage two I have actively looked for instances where codes (preparedness characterisics) were talked about together or collectively explained a facet of preparedness, which was a starting point. I printed off all of the codes onto paper and read them. Then I began to arrange them into the groups already identified. These groups grew and new groups were formed until all codes sat in a single group. These groups were designated as sub-themes and given names (such as "roles and responsibilities" or "clinical reasoning"). I double checked that the data within the subthemes were consistent with the subtheme name, and I extrapolated candidate quotes that backed up what I was trying to encapsulate.

Subthemes were then grouped into main themes:

The initial candidate main theme names were:

o Learning at work: from the classroom to a clinical and professional environment

o Learning through work: self-directed and experiential learning

o Learning for work: enthusiasm and motivation

o The growth mindset: using feedback and reflection, at and after work

o Communication, consultation and clinical reasoning

o Knowledge for work

o Practical competence and confidence for work

Next, I presented these themes to my supervisors and we discussed the theme names, and their internal consistency (did the codes and subthemes work together to represent the theme name) and external heterogeneity (were the themes significantly different, with little overlap).

I renamed some themes to give them clearer boundaries and to relate the name more specifically to preparedness. I also made some changes to the subthemes, particularly talk about the growth mindset, from how students learn in the workplace (it was in theme 2) to the feedback/refection theme (it is now in theme 4).

I have ended up with a three tier taxonomy to describe preparedness: 91 codes sat in 26 themes, in 7 main themes.

For stage six (writing up) I constructed sentences to describe each subtheme, aiming to encapsulate what the codes within it were describing about preparedness. I read through those codes and their data again in NVivo to check for consistency, and included a single quotation to represent each subtheme.