Pedagogy Innovation — Teaching Staff's Attitudes and Participation

Abstract

This chapter reports teaching staff's attitudes towards and participation in pedagogy innovation. It aims to get overall ideas of staff concerning introducing new or alternative teaching methods to the current medicine and health education, and about the familiarity of particular teaching methods. Eleven questions were asked regarding these aspects. Data are analyzed with SPSS 15.0 and the results are presented in this chapter, which are structured in two sections. Section 1 reports how participants respond to (1) to what extent they think alternative teaching methods (e.g. PBL) should be introduced to medicine and health education; (2) to what they think of the effect of PBL; (3) to what extent they agree that reflective learning methods should be implemented in medical teaching; and (4) to what extent they think that the concept of lifelong learning should be integrated in the teaching and learning process. Section 2 presents the involvement and familiarity of participants' universities in the following aspects: (1) whether the PBL has been implemented at their university; (2) whether they are familiar with the concepts of mentoring and student support; 72(3) whether they are familiar with the concepts of reflection and reflective practice; (4) whether they use reflective learning methods in their teaching; (5) whether they are familiar with the concept of lifelong learning; (6) whether they are familiar with the concept of co-operative learning; and (7) whether they are familiar with the concept of portfolio building. The overall findings, as well as the effects of participants' gender, age, profession, job title, and their university's location, on the above mentioned issues are presented, respectively.