Reconsidering "good teaching" across the continuum of medical education

Abstract

There is no shortage of sustained inquiry into the nature and evaluation of teaching in medical education. For the most part, however, this growing and respectable body of inquiry has uncritically adopted a single model of effective teaching that is assumed to be appropriate across variations in context, learners, and teachers. This article presents five alternative views of "good teaching" and challenges the trend toward any single, dominant view of what constitutes good teaching. Based on 10 years of research, in five different countries, studying hundreds of educators in adult and higher education across a wide range of disciplines, contexts, and cultures, we have evidence of five different perspectives on good teaching: transmission, developmental, apprenticeship, nurturing, and social reform. Each perspective represents a philosophical orientation to knowledge, learning, and the role and responsibility of being an educator. A "snapshot" of each perspective is provided, including an example from continuing medical education (CME), a set of key beliefs, primary responsibilities, typical strategies, and common difficulties. Readers are encouraged to use the five perspectives as a means of identifying, articulating, and revisiting assumptions and beliefs they hold regarding their view of effective teaching. They are also encouraged to resist a "one-size-fits-all" approach to the investigation, improvement, or evaluation of teaching in CME.