Nature of Educational Research

Today, we were introduced to the wonderful world of medical education research. By juxtaposing the positions of Dr. Geoff Norman (Norman, 2011) and Dr. Glenn Regehr (Regehr, 2011), we glimpsed one of the hottest ongoing debates in medical education research – what is the nature of education science and how should we go about conducting educational research? Does our current approach overly resemble a “search for proofs of simple generalisable solutions” to truly appreciate the complexity of medical education? Or is the reductionist approach a valid method for extracting meaningful and practical information about this complicated system? The truth may lie somewhere in between. Perhaps we can start to reconcile the two sides by applying scientific methods with greater appreciation of the multivariate nature of medical education and carefully reflecting on study results.

Good journals on the topic of medical education, for future reference, includes:
·         Academic Medicine
·         Medical Education
·         Advances in Health Science Education
·         Medical Teacher
·         Teaching and Learning in Medicine

Norman, G. (2011). Chaos, complexity and complicatedness: lessons from rocket science. Medical Education, 45(6), 549-59. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.03945.x
Regehr, G. (2011). Highway spotters and traffic controllers: further reflections on complexity. Medical education, 45(6), 542-3. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04007.x


- Jenny