The Ethics of Teaching: Critical Thinking and Reflection to Promote Professionalism by Mitigating Biases Including those against other Healthcare Professions.

Abstract

In the USA I see bumper stickers and t-shirts that declare “Critical thinking: the other national deficit.” Unfortunately here, and elsewhere in the world, these words are often true. Not only does the internet give us ample opportunity to express ourselves without much reflection or thought, but college and university courses do not always expect and foster critical thinking and reflection on the part of students, particularly when the courses have lecture formats and large enrollments. In my view, this is especially true of the basic and even the clinical sciences in healthcare professional education. Many of the latter educators do not heed well the admonition in McKeachie's Teaching Tips (McKeachie and Svinicki, 2014) “Teach your students to reflect both in and out of class. That reflection should never stop, because conscious reflection on values is perhaps the cornerstone of the ethics of teaching.”