Think-Pair-Share: Promoting Equitable Participation and In-Depth Discussion.

Introduction: Increasing student participation within the classroom can improve student engagement, the classroom environment, and student learning, and can provide for more diverse perspectives on the content. Think-pair-share (TPS) is an instructional strategy that can be used to promote and support student participation and enhance learning. Our study aimed to investigate the use of this strategy in early medical education. Methods: Using content analysis of video recordings, equity mapping software, and student surveys, we examined the implementation of TPS in three different small groups of first-year medical students. We looked for increased student participation, equity in the distribution of student participation, and quality of discussion as evidence of TPS's effectiveness in promoting student learning. Results: TPS increased student participation and improved the quality of discussion. Additionally, students indicated TPS positively affected their learning, with the "thinking" and "pairing" time being especially important. Conclusions: In utilizing TPS as an instructional strategy, medical educators can provide a structure that promotes a more equitable distribution of student participation, increased student interaction, and in-depth collaborative dialogue that enhance the overall learning experience.

Community, Coaching, and Action Research: Promoting Ambitious Teaching in Medical Education.

Ambitious teaching is an instructional approach enacted through central tasks of teaching that involves a fundamental shift in mindset and practice. In this approach, the teacher facilitates student learning in the context of authentic, interactive experiences by eliciting student thinking and adapting instruction accordingly. We designed the Medical Educator-Excellence in Teaching (MEET) program to promote ambitious teaching in medical education. Here, we describe the structure of MEET, the framework that informed our work, and program evaluation data. We propose MEET as a model of educator development that promotes ambitious teaching through development of educator community, focused coaching, and inquiry into practice.

A Call for Curriculum and Faculty Developers to Attend to Ambitious Teaching in Experiential Curriculum.

To realize the goals of an experiential curriculum, medical educators need support to enact a different kind of teaching: ambitious teaching. Ambitious teaching promotes curricular aims and fosters responsive, interactive environments to elicit student thinking and facilitate student-to-student discussion of clinical concepts and reasoning. The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for ambitious teaching that can be used to meet the complex challenges of experiential learning. Specifically, we describe the ways in which medical education curriculum and faculty developers can support ambitious teaching and, ultimately, enhance curricular outcomes.