For a recent qualitative study exploring how feedback works in medical education, I interviewed a resident who had also been trained as a ballet dancer. 'Critique,' she said, 'is highly prized in the ballet world.' She went on to explain that a teacher's critique, while sometimes emotionally challenging for the dancer, signifies that one is worthy of that teacher's attention, and thus that one has potential. I tried to imagine a similar comment being made about the world of medical education, in which critical feedback to learners is uncommon, and distinctly uncomfortable for all concerned when it does occur. Even the dancer I interviewed acknowledged that receiving critique was a more difficult proposition for her in her medical training. Why does the same educational tool -in this case, constructive feedback -appear to work so differently in different settings, even if the same learner is involved? To answer this question, we must examine learning culture and its power to shape how learning occurs.When I say learning culture, I mean the culture in which learning takes place, as distinct from the notion of a culture of learning that organisations are increasingly called upon to develop (as if creating a culture were as easy as writing a policy). Learning culture refers to the shared attitudes, beliefs, practices and values that underpin how an institution or a profession designs the education of its learners.It is useful to make the distinction here with the related notion of the hidden curriculum. The concept of the hidden curriculum refers to the influence of tacit institutional understandings and entrenched customs on learning, in the process directing educators' attention to the notion of medical education as a cultural process. 1 Yet the hidden curriculum is most often viewed as a negative, subversive force, standing in stark opposition to the expressed goals of the formal curriculum. Learning culture, by contrast, is neither inherently positive nor negative; it may support or constrain various aspects of learning, depending on the circumstances. Its educational manifestations are often not hidden, but, rather, are embodied in explicit decisions that are made about what should be learned, where it should be learned, and how learning should be facilitated. Learning culture influences which educational approaches will work well, or poorly, in a particular setting; it may enable an educational strategy's success or doom it to failure.The concept of learning culture is complementary to Shulman's notion of 'signature pedagogies', the characteristic and sometimes singular approaches to teaching and learning that typify professions. 2 Although the concept of the signature pedagogy focuses our attention on the 'what' and 'how' of teaching and learning within a profession, that of the learning culture also draws our attention to the 'why': why certain teaching strategies are privileged over others, why certain learning experiences are more inherently credible to some learners than to others, and why certain approach...