In this week’s episode, Linda has selected a research synthesis paper published in Medical Education. Our co-hosts discuss a recommendation from the Edinburgh Declaration, which relates to actions essential to the recruitment, development and retention of educators in the health professions and review the work of the authors, which goes over the progress made in developing these key components for training educators and rewarding teaching excellence, explore reasons for the limited reform, and identify possible directions for the future.
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KeyLIME Session 150 – Article under review:
Listen to the podcast
Read the episode abstract here.
Irby, DM and P O’Sullivan. Developing and Rewarding Teachers as Educators and Scholars: Progress and Challenges. Medical Education. [ePub ahead of print]
Reviewer: Linda Snell (@LindaSMedEd)
Background
The Edinburgh Declaration recommendation #5 in 1988 said “Train teachers as educators, not content experts alone, and reward excellence in this field as fully as excellence in biomedical research or clinical practice.” This recommendation describes actions essential to the recruitment, development and retention of educators in the health professions.
Purpose
To describe the scholarly work over 30 years that addressed recommendation #5 above. The authors review the progress made in developing the key components for training educators and rewarding teaching excellence, explore reasons for the limited reform, and identify possible directions for the future.
Type of Paper
Research synthesis
Key Points on Methods
Review of major articles – no methods provided
Key Outcomes
Train teachers as educators, not content experts alone: components of educator knowledge, skills for practice, and identity formation as educators (the educator competency frameworks/standards) are known as are the strategies for faculty development, including teacher certification.
Reward Excellence in Teaching involves redefining, documenting and assessing education scholarship; specifying roles of an educator; recognizing excellence
Support educators: through communities of practice e.g. HPE scholarship units, academies for med ed
Academic Fac Dev units have a role in more than just teaching teachers to teach, including all other ‘professor activities’, and in recognition and reward
But despite great advances over 30 years’ academic values continue to privilege research over teaching in academic rewards, remuneration, status and promotions – a gap remains in recognizing teachers and reforming policies to reward excellence of educators as fully as excellence in biomedical research and clinical practice.’
Key Conclusions
Future directions need to address this and recruit, develop, reward and retain educators. As well as faculty development in all academic activities this includes major academic policy change, clarity of career paths, mentoring, advocacy for teachers to be treated similarly to medical science researchers, and education of leaders (using articles such as this)
Spare Keys – other take home points for Clinician Educator
Excellent bibliography
Shout out
David Irby, Pat O’Sullivan
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