Health Professions Education Scholarship Research Articles

"This Manuscript Was a Complete Waste of Time": Reviewer Etiquette Matters.

"This Manuscript Was a Complete Waste of Time": Reviewer Etiquette Matters.

Boyer and Beyond: An Interview Study of Health Professions Education Scholarship Units in the United States and a Synthetic Framework for Scholarship at the Unit Level.

Health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) in the United States are large in number and diverse in purpose, activities, and contributions. Although each of these units shares a commitment to scholarship, there is no synthetic framework to accurately represent and evaluate their activities and contributions. This study aimed to provide such a framework. The authors examined data collected from 11 U.S. HPESU directors. Interviews occurred between April 2015 and February 2016. The research team used a combination of deductive and inductive qualitative techniques to analyze the interview transcripts. The deductive portion drew on Boyer's four-part framework of scholarship; the inductive portion produced a new conceptualization of scholarship at the HPESU level. The scholarly activities of HPESUs generally align with Boyer's four types of scholarship-discovery, integration, application, and teaching. However, this categorization fails to capture the interconnectedness and variety of purposes served by these activities. Both are important when considering how best to represent the scholarly contributions made by HPESUs. From their analysis of interviews, the authors developed a three-part framework characterizing HPESU scholarly activities: supporting a scholarly approach to education, supporting educational scholarship within the institution, and supporting HPESU members' scholarship. The authors contend that the three-part, unit-level framework for scholarship constructed in this study brings clarity and understanding to the purpose, activities, and contributions made by HPESUs in the United States. The proposed framework may allow unit directors to better justify and advocate for the resources needed to further promote the work of HPESUs.

\u201cMy right-hand man\u201d versus \u201cWe barely make use of them\u201d: change leaders talking about educational scientists in curriculum change processes\u2014a Membership Categorization Analysis

Health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) are increasingly becoming a standard for medical schools worldwide without having much information about their value and role in actual educational practices, particularly of those who work in these units, the educational scientists. We conducted a linguistic analysis, called Membership Categorization Analysis, of interviews with leaders of recent curriculum changes to explore how they talk about educational scientists in relation to these processes. The analysis was conducted on previously collected interview data with nine change leaders of major undergraduate medical curriculum change processes in the Netherlands. We analyzed how change leaders categorize HPESUs and educational scientists (use of category terms) and what they say about them (predicates). We noticed two ways of categorizing educational scientists, with observable different predicates. Educational scientists categorized by their first name were suggested to be closer to the change process, more involved in decisional practices and positively described, whereas those described in more generic terms were represented in terms of relatively passive and unspecified activities, were less explicit referenced for their knowledge and expertise and were predominantly factually or negatively described. This study shows an ambiguous portrayal of educational scientists by leaders of major curriculum change processes. Medical schools are challenged to establish medical curricula in consultation with a large, diverse and interdisciplinary stakeholder group. We suggest that it is important to invest in interpersonal relationships to strengthen the internal collaborations and make sure people are aware of each other’s existence and roles in the process of curriculum development.

A Rose by Other Names: Some General Musings on Lawrence and Colleagues' Hidden Curriculum Scoping Review.

In this Commentary, the authors explore the scoping review by Lawrence and colleagues by challenging their conclusion that with over 25 years' worth of "ambiguous and seemingly ubiquitous use" of the hidden curriculum construct in health professions education scholarship, it is time to either move to a more uniform definitional foundation or abandon the term altogether. The Commentary authors counter these remedial propositions by foregrounding the importance of theoretical diversity and the conceptual richness afforded when the hidden curriculum construct is used as an entry point for studying the interstitial space between the formal and a range of other-than-formal domains of learning. They document how tightly delimited scoping strategies fail to capture the wealth of educational scholarship that operates within a hidden curriculum framework, including "hidden" hidden curriculum articles, studies that employ alternative constructs, and investigations that target important tacit sociocultural influences on learners and faculty without formally deploying the term. They offer examples of how the hidden curriculum construct, while undergoing significant transformation in its application within the field of health professions education, has created the conceptual foundation for the application of a number of critical perspectives that make visible the field's political investments in particular forms of knowing and associated practices. Finally, the Commentary authors invite readers to consider the methodological promise afforded by conceptual heterogeneity, particularly strands of scholarship that resituate the hidden curriculum concept within the magically expansive dance of social relationships, social learning, and social life that form the learning environments of health professions education.

Developing and rewarding teachers as educators and scholars: remarkable progress and daunting challenges.

This article describes the scholarly work that has addressed the fifth recommendation of the 1988 World Conference on Medical Education: 'Train teachers as educators, not content experts alone, and reward excellence in this field as fully as excellence in biomedical research or clinical practice'. Over the past 30 years, scholars have defined the preparation needed for teaching and other educator roles, and created faculty development delivery systems to train teachers as educators. To reward the excellence of educators, scholars have expanded definitions of scholarship, defined educator roles and criteria for judging excellence, and developed educator portfolios to make achievements visible for peer review. Despite these efforts, the scholarship of discovery continues to be more highly prized and rewarded than the scholarship of teaching. These values are deeply embedded in university culture and policies. To remedy the structural inequalities between researchers and educators, a holistic approach to rewarding the broad range of educational roles and educational scholarship is needed. This requires strong advocacy to create changes in academic rewards and support policies, provide a clear career trajectory for educators using learning analytics, expand programmes for faculty development, support health professions education scholarship units and academies of medical educators, and create mechanisms to ensure high standards for all educators.

Health Professions Education Scholarship Unit Leaders as Institutional Entrepreneurs.

Health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) are organizational structures within which a group is substantively engaged in health professions education scholarship. Little research investigates the strategies employed by HPESU administrative leaders to secure and maintain HPESU success. Using institutional entrepreneurship as a theoretical lens, this study asks: Do HPESU administrative leaders act as institutional entrepreneurs (IEs)? This study recontextualizes two preexisting qualitative datasets that comprised interviews with leaders in health professions education in Canada (2011-2012) and Australia and New Zealand (2013-1014). Two researchers iteratively analyzed the data using the institutional entrepreneurship construct until consensus was achieved. A third investigator independently reviewed and contributed to the recontextualized analyses. A summary of the analyses was shared with all authors, and their feedback was incorporated into the final interpretations. HPESU leaders act as IEs in three ways. First, HPESU leaders construct arguments and position statements about how the HPESU resolves an institution's problem(s). This theorization discourse justifies the existence and support of the HPESU. Second, the leaders strategically cultivate relationships with the leader of the institution within which the HPESU sits, the leaders of large academic groups with which the HPESU partners, and the clinician educators who want careers in health professions education. Third, the leaders work to increase the local visibility of the HPESU. Practical insights into how institutional leaders interested in launching an HPESU can harness these findings are discussed.

Exploring the institutional logics of health professions education scholarship units.

Although health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) share a commitment to the production and dissemination of rigorous educational practices and research, they are situated in many different contexts and have a wide range of structures and functions. In this study, the authors explore the institutional logics common across HPESUs, and how these logics influence the organisation and activities of HPESUs. The authors analysed interviews with HPESU leaders in Canada (n = 12), Australia (n = 21), New Zealand (n = 3) and the USA (n = 11). Using an iterative process, they engaged in inductive and deductive analyses to identify institutional logics across all participating HPESUs. They explored the contextual factors that influence how these institutional logics impact each HPESU's structure and function. Participants identified three institutional logics influencing the organisational structure and functions of an HPESU: (i) the logic of financial accountability; (ii) the logic of a cohesive education continuum, and (iii) the logic of academic research, service and teaching. Although most HPESUs embodied all three logics, the power of the logics varied among units. The relative power of each logic influenced leaders' decisions about how members of the unit allocate their time, and what kinds of scholarly contribution and product are valued by the HPESU. Identifying the configuration of these three logics within and across HPESUs provides insights into the reasons why individual units are structured and function in particular ways. Having a common language in which to discuss these logics can enhance transparency, facilitate evaluation, and help leaders select appropriate indicators of HPESU success.

Mixed Methods in Health Professions Education Scholarship.

Mixed Methods in Health Professions Education Scholarship.

Working Definitions of the Roles and an Organizational Structure in Health Professions Education Scholarship: Initiating an International Conversation.

Health professions education scholarship (HPES) is an important and growing field of inquiry. Problematically, consistent use of terminology regarding the individual roles and organizational structures that are active in this field are lacking. This inconsistency impedes the transferability of current and future findings related to the roles and organizational structures of HPES. Based on data collected during interviews with HPES leaders in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the Netherlands, the authors constructed working definitions for some of the professional roles and an organizational structure that support HPES. All authors reviewed the definitions to ensure relevance across multiple countries. The authors define and offer illustrative examples of three professional roles in HPES (clinician educator, HPES research scientist, and HPES administrative leader) and an organizational structure that can support HPES participation (HPES unit). These working definitions are foundational and not all-encompassing and, thus, are offered as stimulus for international dialogue and understanding. With these working definitions, scholars and administrative leaders can examine HPES roles and organizational structures across and between national contexts to decide how lessons learned in other contexts can be applied to their local contexts. Although rigorously constructed, these definitions need to be vetted by the international HPES community. The authors argue that these definitions are sufficiently transferable to support such scholarly investigation and debate.

Academic promotion packages: crafting connotative frames.

Among the challenges of navigating the promotion and tenure (P&T) process is the need to describe one’s career using the language of P&T expectations, while also framing that language to reflect the unique work involved in health professions education (HPE) scholarship. Drawing on the distinction between denotative and connotative meanings of words, we describe how the language of P&T standards can hold different meanings depending on how they are contextualized in the HPE field and the communities therein. To illustrate, we describe our experiences of adapting the language of ‘teaching’ to the expectations of the P&T committee while also reflecting the non-traditional ‘teaching’ we do in HPE. We also share three practical tips for navigating the P&T process: (1) find a local mentor, (2) craft the story of your expertise, and (3) seek feedback from your local stakeholders on the connotative story you have crafted.