Exploring some useful ideas from the Past, and Present to inform the Future of Health Professions Education
By Poh-Sun Goh
Thank you for inviting me to give this Webinar.
In this presentation, I would like to take the opportunity to explore some useful ideas from the Past, and Present, that I believe can inform our future thinking and planning for the Future of Health Professions Education.
These ideas include the changing, and evolving role of the instructor or teacher; the role of students; the importance of faculty development and professionalising the practice and art of teaching in health professions education; the importance of self-directed learning and competency training for students in best practices for learning informed by learning science; the increasing role of student support, welfare and coaching to optimise student performance; and the role of technology to support and enhancing learning and teaching. Another way of looking at these ideas would be an examination of the role and importance of “human factors”, and “technology”, and how to optimise both.
Frenk, Julio, Lincoln Chen, and Catherine Michaud, 'The future of health professional education', in Kieran Walsh (ed.), Oxford Textbook of Medical Education, Oxford Textbook (Oxford, 2013; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Oct. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199652679.003.0059, accessed 11 Aug. 2024.
"The need for a fit-for-purpose curriculum with a closer alignment of health professions education with society’s needs was addressed at the International Conference on the Future of Health Professions Education held in Miami in November 2022. Issues discussed at the Conference were equity, competency-based education, technology enhanced learning, interprofessional education, lifelong learning, international collaborations, and the changing role of students."
Harden, R. M. (2024). The future of health professions education. Medical Teacher, 46(4), 436–437. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2024.2320521
The role of the teacher is evolving, from the “sage on the stage”, to “guide on the side”, particularly with the explosion of easily accessible learning materials and content online, the increasing emphasis on self-directed and on-demand personalised learning. Through this dynamic interaction, between teachers and students, and students with learning materials and activities is the importance distinction between information and knowledge, and the processes that transform information into knowledge in the student (Morrison, 2014).
Morrison, Charles D. (2014) "From ‘Sage on the Stage’ to ‘Guide on the Side’: A Good Start," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2014.080104
At the end of the day, the key ideas is successful learning “in” the student, how teachers can promote and support this, and how students can achieve this. A key consideration as part of this discussion is the role of faculty development for teachers, and competency development in students.
"The 8 roles of the medical teacher: (Ron Harden and Pat Lilley, 2018)
The teacher as an information provider and coach
The teacher as a facilitator and mentor
The teacher as a curriculum developer and implementer
The teacher as an assessor and diagnostician
The teacher as a role model
The teacher as a manager and leader
The teacher as a scholar and researcher
The teacher as a professional"
https://shop.elsevier.com/books/the-eight-roles-of-the-medical-teacher/harden/978-0-7020-6895-9
"The seven roles of the student (Jenni Harden and Ron Harden, 2023)
The student as a professional, including professionalism and the student's health and well-being
The student as a facilitator of their own learning
The role of the student as an information processor, and information seeker
The student as a curriculum collaborator, and curriculum co-creator
The student as an assessor
The student as a teacher
The student as a scholar"
https://shop.elsevier.com/books/the-changing-role-of-medical-students/harden/978-0-323-87022-1
There is a science of both teaching, and learning, and both teachers and students can benefit from systematic and cumulative efforts to skill up their competencies as teachers, and learners respectively. Student welfare, support and coaching also has a key role, not only supporting the physical, mental and emotional health of our students, but also helping them, through coaching, to develop deeper insights into themselves, their motivations, in order to help students make informed choices and decisions in their professional practice.
https://www.learningscientists.org/
"6 Strategies for Effective Learning
Spaced Practice
Retrieval Practice
Elaboration
Interleaving
Concrete Examples
Dual Coding"
https://www.learningscientists.org/downloadable-materials
Shorey, S., Ang, E., Chua, J., & Goh, P. S. (2022). Coaching interventions among healthcare students in tertiary education to improve mental well-being: A mixed studies review. Nurse education today, 109, 105222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2021.105222
Running parallel with these “human factors” is the role of technology, to support, and enhance teaching and learning. Our digital platforms increasingly have the capacity to give both teachers and students visibility into what, and how they perform, in a dynamic, real-time way, both to formal standards, and in relation to peers. Both digital data and dashboards, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the capacity to precisely personalise individual learning and training activities and programs. We will have the opportunity increasingly to do this, through accessible technology and AI. What is needed is professional capacity building and training of both our teachers, and students to best use technology and AI, informed by sound pedagogy and learning science (Goh, 2020; Goh, 2021).
Understanding Instructional Design e.g.
ADDIE model, SAM model, Action Mapping, Learning Cycle Framework, Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, Gagné's 9 Events of Instruction, Bloom's Taxonomy, Dick and Carey Model, Kemp's Instructional Design Model, Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Training Evaluation and Design Thinking
TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework when using Educational Technology
https://educationaltechnology.net/technological-pedagogical-content-knowledge-tpack-framework/
Goh, PS. (2021). 'The vision of transformation in medical education after the COVID-19 pandemic'. Korean J Med Educ. 33 (3): 171-174. Publication Date (Web): 2021 August 27. https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2021.197
Goh, PS. (2020). Medical Educator Roles of the Future. Med.Sci.Educ. 30 (Suppl 1), 5–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-020-01086-w
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