Joost Van Wijchen

Field of work

Work and areas of expertise

I am a Principal Lecturer in Physiotherapy and Assistant Head of Department at the Department of Health and Function at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. My work spans physiotherapy, health professions education, rehabilitation, learning design and academic leadership, with justice, sustainability and ecological responsibility as perspectives that run throughout. I am particularly interested in the spaces of possibility we create for health, learning, participation and action, and in how people, professions and societies can develop within complex and changing contexts.

For more than twenty years in higher education, I have worked with professional becoming, professional judgement, clinical and critical reasoning, learning design and assessment as learning. I understand education as a programme ecology in which people, knowledge, practices, assessment, technology, environments and structural conditions interact and develop over time. This work continues through national and international research and development projects concerned with learning ecologies, co-regulated learning, artificial intelligence and the development of health professions education. From this perspective, learning is a relational process and a continuous movement between understanding, participating, trying, reflecting and acting.

My professional background is in physiotherapy, with experience in musculoskeletal physiotherapy, manual therapy, sports, pain, migration health and health promotion. Through DARE and SARHA, I work with data-assisted rehabilitation, exploring how data, technology, people's experiences, clinical knowledge and professional judgement can work together and open new possibilities for rehabilitation.

Justice and sustainability connect these areas. I am interested in how health, learning and participation emerge through relationships between people, communities, places, practices, and more-than-human and ecological systems. The Capability Approach, critical pedagogy, social and epistemic justice, and planetary health provide perspectives for exploring what possibilities are created, who can participate in shaping and accessing them, and how practices can develop responsibly in relation to people, communities and planetary conditions for life.

I am also affiliated with the academic community at the Unit for Learning, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen, working within medical and health professions education. I participate in several national and European research and development collaborations, including ARTEMIS WP6, EdAge-Physio, HEQED AI and research on learning ecologies and co-regulated learning.

My professional engagement includes also chairing the Council for Physiotherapy Ethics and contributing to work on digitalisation and AI within the Norwegian Physiotherapist Association. I am also a member of the Education Committee of World Physiotherapy, the Climate Health Initiative (CHI), and the Executive Committee of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association. Across these arenas, I engage with professional development, education, ethics, technology, justice and ecological sustainability, and with how physiotherapy can continue to develop its responsibilities and scope for action in society.

Teaching areas

• Physiotherapy, clinical reasoning and professional judgement
• Relational practice, communication, ethics and collaboration
• Knowledge practices, critical thinking and evidence-based practice
• Professional becoming, learning design, assessment and programme ecology
• Digital health, data, artificial intelligence and rehabilitation
• Justice, sustainability, climate and planetary health

Research areas

• Health professions education, learning ecologies and programme development
• Professional becoming, learning, assessment and professional judgement
• Knowledge practices, clinical reasoning and complexity
• Rehabilitation, data, digitalisation and artificial intelligence
• Relational practice, participation, capability and justice
• Sustainability, climate, planetary health and more-than-human perspectives