Reflective practice by health professions educators to enhance learning and teaching: AMEE Guide No. 166

Reflective practice is an essential aspect of the professional development of all health professions educators, with the intention to enhance both learning and teaching. This Guide presents an overview of reflective practice for educators and provides a practical and developmental reflective practice approach for health professions educators. The importance of structured thinking frameworks to stimulate greater understanding of both learning and teaching situations is highlighted. Medical Educator Reflective Practice Sets (MERPS) is an innovative approach for enhancing learning and teaching in health professions education that integrates lesson study and action learning. The key features of the approach are participation in three collaborative sessions, the use of structured thinking frameworks, and solution-focussed teaching in response to the identified problem. The MERPS approach is flexible and can be adapted for implementation across the continuum of health professions education, from undergraduate to postgraduate and continuing professional development.

Using multiple measures to evaluate a dental faculty development program

INTRODUCTION

The formal preparation of dental professionals for teaching is increasingly seen as essential to enhance teacher effectiveness and student learning and to promote curricular initiatives. As a result, many dental schools have implemented a variety of faculty development programming. There is a body of literature that describes these programmes, but there is limited rigorous evaluation of them. The use of multiple measures of evaluation helps to compensate for potential inadequacies of individual methods. Analyses with multiple measures provide a more comprehensive view of whether a programme is achieving its learning outcomes.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A dental faculty development programme, Class Advanced Clinical Teaching Scholars (ACTS), at New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD) was evaluated with four different measures: pre- and post-programme tests of participants' level of relevant pedagogical knowledge, pre- and post-programme objective structured teaching examinations (OSTEs), pre- and post-programme self-assessments of teaching abilities and post-programme participant satisfaction surveys. Two of the measures used a comparison group of faculty.

RESULTS

Results revealed that the Class ACTS participants significantly improved their knowledge; observed teaching performance in most teaching domains tested showed significant improvement; there was no significant change in self-assessed teaching abilities after participation; and the course was viewed positively by the participants.

CONCLUSION

Class ACTS, an advanced dental faculty development course, has been successfully implemented and evaluated with the use of multiple measures.