Should didactic methods be subject of institutional policy? Reflections of a retired teacher

Abstract

Background: Medical schools are replacing the traditional "teacher-centered" instruction that casts students as passive recipients of lectures by "learner-centered" methods that entail student involvement. Some schools have adopted learner-centered methods as institutional policy. Objective: To describe the author's teaching approaches at two Israeli medical schools in the 1970s - 1990s, and explore the pros and cons of a policy that requires from faculty to use a single teaching method. Observations: Students were interested in lectures that summarized clinical knowledge and in experiences aimed at imparting clinical skills . However, students appeared to be bored by lectures that they perceived as clinically irrelevant , or as preaching values . In such domains challenging small groups of students to cope with a specific task was more effective in achieving the learning objective. Implications: Different topics may require different teaching methods. The author proposes to familiarize faculty with the strengths and weaknesses of lectures, flipped classrooms, problem- and inquiry-based learning; develop guidelines for assessing the effectiveness of these teaching methods; and encourage faculty to choose the method with which they feel comfortable, and which they consider optimal for the subject to be taught.