Let’s Scramble, Not Flip, the Classroom

 

[simnor_button url=”http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/02/14/flipping-classroom-isnt-answer-lets-scramble-it-essay ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”Pamela Barnett ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]

Derm has been a very very popular specialty in the US for many  decades. Some of this reflects work / life stuff, the ability to mix surgery and physician-like diagnostic skills, and because skin disease matters to patients a great deal, and if they purchase their own care, they put a big value on it. (And in truth the fact that acute medicine is deeply unpopular and unsustainable as a longterm career). I have been told similar changes are playing out in the UK, but I hadn’t seen any figures. Here is a summary for ‘medical’ (sic) specialities from the RCP just published in ‘Clinical Medicine’ showing, as for lots of domains, the winds blow east across the Atlantic.

Well, I blogged a few days ago about a medical education paradigm that needs terminating with extreme prejudice.

The world will end before you can read all the papers on student learning in medical education and find ten that actually validate cross sectional data of what students think, with measures of long term learning and competence. The paradigm is a failure. Can we stop.

 

Nay chance. Look at this. Not a measure of learning in sight. ‘Happy charts’. And I think the sun goes round the earth, so that’s OK too. Yes, I know, skip reading the literature, or get therapy.

“Theory without practice makes more sense in theory than in practice” –

 

[simnor_button url=”http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/04/05/learn-to-fly-online/#sthash.xrbzL6vk.dpuf ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”Mark McGuire quoting ? ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]

Well, imagine if this catches on:

Interesting series of articles in Science on research funding. Worth a read if you are thinking about careers.

Stephen Downes has — as usual— an insightful slant on things. He is commenting in relation to an article here. He writes:

Someone asked me this week whether I thought the skills mismatch really exists. The idea of the skills mismatch is that despite persistent unemployment, there are high-skilled or specialized jobs that go unfilled in large numbers because people with the skills aren’t available. My response was that the existence of hundreds of colleges and universities is de facto evidence of a skills mismatch. So when a publication like the Globe and Mail calls the skills mismatch a fairytale, it is referring to one specific statistic in one particular industry, which may or may not be misleading. But in fact, there have always been skills mismatches, and while we can’t predict precise job markets, we can do our best – government, industry and education – to prepare people to adapt and grow into the new needed skills. “What you can try and do is ensure that you are as resilient as you can be and that you have the broad set of flexible skills that allow you to take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along.”

 

One definition of education (as compared with training ..perhaps) is of course is it is that which provides resilience in the face of change. Better still we might consider using Nassem Taleb’s term, anti-fragility. Humans are not fitted to one ecological niche, rather evolution has selected us for the ability to fit into many niches. We can also not just respond to the environment, but becomes masters of it (and therein lies on occasions hubris). This is one framework in which to view education. Those who believe in medial education as well as medical training, will warm to this approach. The difficulty is defining what aspects of education really do facilitate the ability to adapt. The usual mantras of ‘teaching lifelong learning skills’ I am deeply sceptical of. You can cultivate those attributes, you can signal you value them, but you can’t expect to ‘tick-box’ them.
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The world will end before you can read all the papers on student learning in medical education and find ten that actually validate cross sectional data of what students think, with measures of long term learning and competence. The paradigm is a failure. Can we stop.

 

[simnor_button url=”http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/14/56 ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”No more please ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]

 

Even with more stock videos of  medical students here

via Status-Q

For me, several years removed from training, the stony bureaucracy and burdensome administration are astonishing. Modern shift patterns have broken teams where peer and consultant rapport made being a junior doctor survivable. Now, rather than judge juniors through a colleague who has taught them and seen them on the job we use anonymous comments from someone on a feedback form. This causes huge distress. The moral contract of medicine, of choosing to do a job out of care and love, has been fractured because of the unyielding training structures that senior doctors have bequeathed.

 

Margaret McCartney on the dismal and worsening state of postgraduate education and training in the UK. The title ‘Frankly, it is not much fun’ are her words, but the words that spring to my weary mind are those of William Blake: ‘A dog at the master’s gate, predicts the ruin of the state.’ And so it will come to pass.