School of Medicine Resident Teaching Skills

Teaching Resident Physicians to Be Educators

BEST Module 1: Introduction to Clinical Teaching

Bringing Education & Service Together (BEST) is an interdisciplinary service learning project for resident physicians.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, residents will be able to:

  • Identify learning theory.
  • Describe the teachable moment.
  • Describe their teaching style.
  • Plan ways to improve their teaching style.

Learning Theory

Constructivism
  • Learning occurs by continuous building and amending structures in the brain known as schemata.
  • We actively create our own knowledge and understanding of the world.
  • We must ask questions, explore and assess what we know.
Social Learning
  • Social interaction plays a fundamental role in cognition.
  • Skills that can be developed with peer collaboration exceed what can be attained alone.
  • Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling. This involves:
    • Attention
    • Retention
    • Motor reproduction
    • Motivation
Behavioral Learning
  • Learning is defined as a permanent change in observable behavior.
  • Learning objectives came out of this movement.
  • We should be able to evaluate learning by assessing things we can observe.
Cognitive
  • Focuses on helping learners encode new knowledge within existing conceptual frameworks.
  • Seek to promote a learning culture amount learners.
  • Role modeling becomes particularly important in professional training.
Adult Learning
  • Learners bring a lifetime of experience to the learning environment.
  • Adults are motivated by an internal need to know and are self-directed.
  • Important to show the relevance of what is being taught.