Short and long term effects of a teacher-training workshop in medical school

Abstract

The effect of a teacher-training workshop in a medical school was studied. The change in instructional behavior was judged by the amount and kind of students' verbal activities during regular lessons and by the cognitive level of the teacher student encounters. One hundred and sixty-one lessons of 60 teachers were observed in a period up to 500 days after the four-day workshop. The results indicate a considerable increase in both parameters following the training. The new level of performance was sustained for the activity parameter along the entire follow-up period. The cognitive level moderately declined after about 200 days. After 500 days the instructional behavior still was significantly different from that before the workshop. The implications for teacher-training and reinforcement interventions are discussed.

A systematic review of faculty development initiatives designed to improve teaching effectiveness in medical education: BEME Guide No. 8

“…Another study (Irby et al, 1982) found that self-reports and observable behaviors matched; a third (Nasmith et al, 1997) did not. In those studies where post-tests and delayed post-test comparisons were made, changes appear to have been maintained (Mahler & Benor, 1984;Steinert et al, 2001).…”

“…Twenty-three of the interventions reported were described as workshops, most commonly a single intervention of varying duration (Irby et al, 1982;Mahler & Benor, 1984;Olukoya, 1986;Valdiserri et al, 1986;Mahler & Neumann, 1987;Schmidt et al, 1989;McDermott & Anderson, 1991;Nathan & Smith, 1992;Bird et al, 1993;Coles & Tomlinson, 1994;Sachdeva & Kelliher, 1994;Nasmith et al, 1997;Andriole et al, 1998;Dennick, 1998;Quirk et al, 1998;Wilkerson & Sarkin, 1998;Baroffio et al, 1999;Baxley et al, 1999;Olmesdahl & Manning, 1999;Skeff et al, 1999;Snyder, 2001;Steinert et al, 2001). Only seven of the 23 stated a theoretical or conceptual framework.…”

“…Level 3-Behavior: 15 reports evaluated outcomes at level 3 (Irby et al, 1982;Mahler & Benor, 1984;Mahler & Neumann, 1987;Nathan & Smith, 1992;Bird et al, 1993;Coles & Tomlinson, 1994;Sachdeva & Kelliher, 1994;Nasmith et al, 1997;Andriole et al, 1998;Dennick, 1998;Quirk et al, 1998;Baroffio et al, 1999;Skeff et al, 1999;Snyder, 2001), primarily through self-reports. Teachers reported improvements in their teaching abilities and use of specific approaches to teaching.…”

Using a Commercially Available Web-Based Evaluation System to Enhance Residents' Teaching

“…[6][7][8] The OSTE scores for residents involved in the reinforcement intervention, taken 8 months after their RATs workshop, were as high or higher than those of control group residents examined 3 weeks after the workshops. A number of factors may have contributed to the finding that students generally rated the residents higher than the residents themselves.…”

“…Repeated studies have shown that teaching skills degrade over time without reinforcement (eg, .6 months [6][7][8] ), and we hypothesized that if the reinforcement system was effective, degradation would be prevented and there would be no significant difference in the performance of both groups. A two-tailed Student t-test was performed of the overall mean across stations, followed by tests of differences of the 6 stations.…”