Interdisciplinarity in medical education research: myth and reality

Mathieu Albert,Paula Rowland,Suzanne Laberge,Farah Friesen

doi:10.1007/s10459-020-09977-8

Abstract

The medical education (Med Ed) research community characterises itself as drawing on the insights, methods, and knowledge from multiple disciplines and research domains (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Humanities, Psychology). This common view of Med Ed research is echoed and reinforced by the narrative used by leading Med Ed departments and research centres to describe their activities as “interdisciplinary.” Bibliometrics offers an effective method of investigating scholarly communication to determine what knowledge is valued, recognized, and utilized. By empirically examining whether knowledge production in Med Ed research draws from multiple disciplines and research areas, or whether it primarily draws on the knowledge generated internally within the field of Med Ed, this article explores whether the characterisation of Med Ed research as interdisciplinary is substantiated. A citation analysis of 1412 references from research articles published in 2017 in the top five Med Ed journals was undertaken. A typology of six knowledge clusters was inductively developed. Findings show that the field of Med Ed research draws predominantly from two knowledge clusters: the Applied Health Research cluster (made of clinical and health services research), which represents 41% of the references, and the Med Ed research cluster, which represents 40% of the references. These two clusters cover 81% of all references in our sample, leaving 19% distributed among the other knowledge clusters (i.e., Education, disciplinary, interdisciplinary and topic centered research). The quasi-hegemonic position held by the Applied Health and Med Ed research clusters confines the other sources of knowledge to a peripheral role within the Med Ed research field. Our findings suggest that the assumption that Med Ed research is an interdisciplinary field is not convincingly supported by empirical data and that the knowledge entering Med Ed comes mostly from the health research domain.

Highlights

Is the field of medical education (Med Ed) research an interdisciplinary field? This question may sound odd to members of the field as it is generally presumed that Med Ed research draws on the insights, methods, and knowledge from multiple disciplines and research domains (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Humanities, Psychology) (Albert et al 2020)
The quasi-hegemonic position held by these two knowledge clusters confines the other sources of knowledge to a peripheral role within the Med Ed research field
Our findings suggest that when Med Ed researchers seek knowledge from outside their field, they predominantly draw from one research area

Summary

Introduction

This question may sound odd to members of the field as it is generally presumed that Med Ed research draws on the insights, methods, and knowledge from multiple disciplines and research domains (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Humanities, Psychology) (Albert et al 2020). This common view of Med Ed research is echoed and reinforced by the narrative used by leading Med Ed departments and research centres to describe their activities. We define interdisciplinarity, following the National Academy of Science’s definition (2005), as communication and collaboration between researchers across academic disciplines and research domains

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Conclusion