Valuing educational scholarship at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Since the late 1980s faculty and staff at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) have actively sought to align their school's academic culture and promotional process with its mission of educational excellence and innovation. As one of the top 50 medical schools receiving NIH funds, MCW has well-established mechanisms to evaluate and recognize the scholarship of discovery. Understanding, evaluating, and recognizing the value of individuals engaged in the scholarship of teaching, however, required changes in individuals' beliefs and in the MCW's promotion processes and organizational infrastructure. Building on the successful introduction of the MCW's Educator's PortfolioCopyright, a tool for documenting educational scholarship, a multifaceted change strategy was implemented to influence underlying beliefs and values about clinician-educators. Retrospectively, this strategy was consistent with John Kotter's eight-step change model, which the authors apply as an organizing framework for this case report of educational evolution at the MCW. Through creating a guiding coalition, developing vision and strategy, generating short-term wins, and anchoring new approaches in the MCW's culture, the MCW has made substantive progress in recognizing and rewarding educational scholarship. Changing academic cultures to value education is itself an educational process, requiring persistence and the ability to teach others about educational scholarship and its associated criteria.

How pediatric educators know what to teach: the use of teaching scripts.

OBJECTIVE: Expert clinical teachers in medicine use teaching scripts. The aim of this study was to determine whether pediatricians also use common components of teaching scripts. METHODS: Seventy-three pediatric clerkship directors identified anticipated errors and teaching points in response to two short vignettes. The content analysis of responses, which we completed, was analyzed by rank and receipt of teaching awards. RESULTS: Greater than 87% of respondents identified at least one of three anticipated learner errors and greater than 80% of respondents identified at least one of three to four teaching points. Teaching points related directly to anticipated errors in 60% of responses. Level of experience and receipt of teaching awards had no impact on response content. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with findings on the use of teaching scripts, pediatrics' educators achieved high congruence on anticipated errors and teaching points on two teaching vignettes. These findings support the hypothesis that developing teaching expertise is associated with other script components.