Reflections on our current history

Eva, Kevin W.

doi:10.1111/medu.13180

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…88 In medical education, those components are diverse, with 162 866 keywords identified between 1963 and 2015. 89 The 'growth and diversification' 90 of medical education research and evaluation, in its many contexts, may help to explain this. The hallmark of social science is not a narrowing of focus and the search for one truth, but is a broadening of concepts, theories, reported experience and method, and, we hope, an increasing tendency for each to tell their own truth well.…”

Section: Evidence and Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quality and constructed knowledge: Truth, paradigms, and the state of the science

Grant¹,

Grant²

2022

Medical Education

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Context and truth: Education is a social science. Social science knowledge is related to its context of origin. The concept of global 'truth' in education is therefore of limited use when truth is tempered by context. The wider applicability of our knowledge can only be judged if we look at the context in which that knowledge was produced and the assumptions that underpin it. This calls into question the idea that educational research is a quest for global 'truth', although in relation to programme evaluation, truth tied to context is an aim. An analysis is presented of the effects of social construction on research and evaluation processes, on the selection of paradigms, reporting and interpreting findings, and on the ethics of all this.Quality and improvement: Quality improvement is based on information selected, constructed and interpreted by those who gather, analyse or use it. The strength, and not the weakness, of our knowledge is that it is socially constructed, contextual and of its time. Increasingly looking for our own truth about educational quality, and not importing the truth of others, is crucial to the state of the science. In terms of quality development, using others' findings must be based on informed local judgement. In social science, those judgements are linked to social context and their associated ideologies.Implications for future work: The hallmark of social science is not a narrowing of focus and the search for one truth, but is a broadening of concepts, theories, paradigms, reported experience and method, and an intention for each to tell their own truth well. This will lead to a wealth of diverse views and analysed experience.The science of medical education must seek many truths.

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Section: Evidence and Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quality and constructed knowledge: Truth, paradigms, and the state of the science

Grant¹,

Grant²

2022

Medical Education

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“…Only 2 months ago in this space I argued (not for the first time) that, paradoxically, diversity is one of the features that defines the field of health professional education by making it difficult to define. 1 In the weeks since that writing I came to realise I was wrong when I had a 'Eureka moment', spotting a common thread to all of the work conducted in our field, a strand that crosses boundaries of perspective, methodological preference and era. As evidence that it is not an easy commonality to identify, consider a mere sampling of the topics explored in our field: problem-based learning, 2 validity, 3 feedback, 4 professionalism, 5 integration, 6 objective structured clinical examinations, 7 self-assessment 8 and longitudinal integrated clerkships.…”

Section: Kevin W Evamentioning

confidence: 99%

What's in a name? Definitional clarity and its unintended consequences

Eva¹

2016

Med Educ

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“…By ‘tensions’ I mean pressures that contradict each other in manners that can make important issues unresolvable or at least lead inevitably to conflicting yet equally valuable opinions/priorities. That is, they are competing perspectives that aren't necessarily right or wrong, but need always to be balanced in one way or another …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, they are competing perspectives that aren't necessarily right or wrong, but need always to be balanced in one way or another. 5 As Moroz points out in his commentary, there are a variety of ways in which we respond to tension, some of which lead us around in circles, and some of which hold the potential to offer new insights by offering a change of perspective or re-framing of the problem being considered. 6 The 'wickedity' of our problems, after all, need not disempower efforts to engage in quality improvement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%