James Field, Pre-clinical dental skills at a glance, Oxford, Wiley, (2015).
Dentistry text book published
Reply
Paper published in Medical Teacher
Dr Sammy Mansour, Primary Care Teaching Fellow, What factors influence British medical students’ career intentions? A primary care response’, Med Teacher, May 11, (2015). This project has also been accepted as an oral presentation the national SAPC conference in Oxford in July.
Faculty winners at TEA awards
The annual TEA awards are about celebrating teaching excellence and we’re proud to report that three awards went to teaching staff in FMS.
Outstanding Contribution to Feedback: Chris Baldwin
Overall Teaching Excellence Award: Clare Guilding
Innovative Teaching FMS: Iain Keenan
Taught Supervisor of the Year: Joanna Matthan (Medical Education)
Concerns about raising concerns
Ellis, J.S., Bateman, H., Thomason, J.M., Whitworth, J. (2015) Concerns about raising concerns. Medical Education, 49: 514-515.
This short article outlines how the School of Dental Sciences responded to the recommendations of the 2013 Mid-Staffordshire National Health Service Foundation Trust Public Enquiry (Francis Report), and what we have learned during the process.
The key focus with respect to raising concerns was to establish a programme of activity and a system of management which encourages openness on behalf of our students and ensures appropriate action to properly address concerns relating to patient safety.
A summary of the range of activities we implemented is described, together with the general approach engendered by the School. Our experience is that there has been a significant increase in the number of students raising concerns, all of these require proportionate, prompt and sympathetic follow-up.
We found that the resource implications for curriculum modification and delivery of the initial programme of activity was relatively minor, but that there were significant staff resource implications in following up concerns and a need to form supportive pathways to external links.
Heidi Bateman, School of Dental Sciences
ASME Annual Scientific Meeting
ASME’s Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) will be held at BT Murrayfield, Edinburgh this year between the 14th July (preconference workshops) and Friday 17th July. The ASM conference is one of the most friendly and inclusive meetings I have ever been to so even if you are going alone, it’s unlikely you’ll stay that way.
For those who have not been before the conference has different strands of activity covering educator development, leadership, research, psychometrics and technology enhanced learning to name but a few. There are also separate events designed specifically for students and trainees as well as teachers /educationalist, developers, programme leads and researchers. Although it is a medical education event you’ll find its contents are relevant to everyone who is interested in education or teaching pre or postgraduates.
This year there are three very varied pre-conference workshops to sign up for: Change, Adaptive Leadership and Management, Creating innovative, fun and engaging online content: navigating the e-learning minefield and Conducting Medical Education Research. The attendance numbers for these workshops are restricted so if interested do get these booked as soon as possible.
The main conference starts on Wednesday morning running over two and a half days. You can buy attendance for a day or two day or the whole event. If you want to go but can only attend for one day I would recommend you look at the website to see what would best suit your interests. The days are usually structured around an early key-note speaker(s), presentations by those receiving awards, intra-conference workshops (a particularly good range of these on Thursday) as well as parallel sessions where delegates present their studies and posters available for perusal. One of the most popular sessions in the past has been the ‘What’s Hot’ event that showcases innovation and creativity across the UK and beyond – I would highly recommend it.
If you’d like any further information about ASME, its awards, bursaries or conferences, please contact jane.stewart@ncl.ac.uk.
Jane Stewart, Chair of ASME’s Education Research Group, School of Medical Education
Call for papers – student engagement
Sociology at Newcastle University will be hosting a Symposium on the 25th September 2015 that will look at the question of ‘student engagement’ in the context of recent reforms in Higher Education. Should be interesting. Further information is available from the School website.
L&T seminar: Promoting Learning through Work
When: 19th November 2015, 12.30-2:00pm
Where: MED.L2.3, Leech Building
This seminar will be presented by Professor Stephen Billett, Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Australia.
Promoting learning through work is important to improve the quality and efficacy of the services provided and/or goods produced. Making workplace learning experiences more effective can assist workers’ initial occupational preparation and their on-going development across lengthening working lives. It can also support workplace continuity and efficacies in responses to changing practices and work requirements. Certainly, much, and perhaps the majority of learning required across working life, arises through the everyday process of work activities and interactions in the circumstances where occupations are practised. This is because work settings provide many of the contributions required to secure the learning necessary to optimise those experiences. This learning is also central to working lifelong employability and developing capacities required for effective occupational practice.
Building on two decades of empirical studies of learning through work activities and interactions, over the past three years, I have engaged in an inquiry to assist understanding of how learning in practice settings can progress effectively. It is concluded that to effectively support and promote that learning, requires: i) a practice curriculum; ii) practice pedagogies and iii) the promotion of workers’ personal epistemologies of practice. The aim of this talk is to discuss these three elements and appraise their usefulness and applicability of those findings to different kinds of occupations and workplaces, through a process of informing participants and capturing their evaluations.
To reserve a place please contact sarah.harvey@ncl.ac.uk.
L&T Seminar: The pedagogy of the Operating Theatre – teaching and learning in the surgical workplace
When: 7th July, 1-2:30pm
Where: Ridley Building 2, Seminar room 1.59
This seminar will be presented by Dr Alexandra Cope, NIHR ACL in Medical Education at University of Leeds. It will explore the operating theatre as a teaching and learning environment examining both some of the affordances as well as some of the difficulties posed by using a high stakes workplace environment as a venue for learning.
Empirical data from interviews and video ethnography in the workplace will be presented to illustrate some of the content and process of teaching and learning. One of the key findings of the research was that post-graduate trainees in surgery must learn to ‘interpret visual and haptic cues’ in other words – learn to ‘make sense’ of what they are seeing or feeling. This holds relevance for many clinical disciplines in which learners need to discern and make sense of ‘signs’.
Whilst the focus of the seminar will be upon post-graduate learners, examples of undergraduate participation will also be used to illustrate key findings. Ethics, methodology and practicalities of data collection in the clinical workplace will be explored, including the use of case-study method and grounded theory. The key findings from the empirical work will be related to educational theory and it is hoped will stimulate useful discussion around teaching and learning in clinical environments.
To reserve a place please contact sarah.harvey@ncl.ac.uk.
Launch Event outcomes
Thank you to everyone who got involved in the ERDP Launch Event in March. The event was very productive with 46 L&T staff, representing all four Teaching Schools and a few of the Institutes, participating in interactive activities to stimulate conversation and generate ideas for ERDP.
We were joined by Professor Simon Lancaster, a National Teaching Fellow from the University of East Anglia, who led a session that challenged us all to get to grips with Twitter (follow the thread for the event: https://storify.com/S_J_Lancaster/faculty-of-medical-sciences-newcastle) and the concept of the flipped classroom. Lively discussion moved from the pros and cons of lecture capture to the concept that students generating their own vignettes results in improved constructive peer critique to the revelation that there is evidence that student module evaluations are systematically biased against women!
There were lots of ideas generated in the World Café session that will help us shape the ERDP into something that L&T staff want. You want information and support. To this end, over the next few months we’ll be looking to:
- collect baseline data about our constituency and what educational research is happening in the Faculty and sharing it with you
- expand the number of resources on our internal website
- establish a social media strategy
- promote networking and collaboration opportunities
- raise awareness of the University promotion process
- promote training opportunities
Tackling a wish list that includes adding extra hours to the day is a tall order but the ERDP is well placed to raise the issue of L&T staff having dedicated research time with University management and sees this as a long term strategic aim.
The notes from the event can be found on our internal webpage. Keep an eye out for our mailing list messages to see what new initiatives we’ll be putting in place.
We hope you gained something from the event and made some new contacts.
Organising team: Vanessa Armstrong, Sarah Harvey, Susanne Lewis, Steve McHanwell, Helen St Clair Thompson, Luisa Wakeling.
Dental School Introductions
The School of Dental Sciences delivers two undergraduate and four post-graduate programmes. All our programmes have a strong vocational focus and the Bachelor of Dental Sciences, and the Diploma in Dental Hygiene & Therapy ( shortly to become the new BSc in Oral & Dental Health sciences) are both accredited by the General Dental Council.
The transformation of a diverse group of young learners into technically able, reflective and professional dentists, and dental hygienists/therapists is not a particularly easy proposition. Many of the issues are common to medicine, particularly the application of science to a clinical scenario, developing effective communication and the attributes of being a health care professional. There are also unique challenges such as developing technical skill to a level so that our charges can safely perform extremely demanding technical dentistry in the confined space of the human mouth. They have to start doing this by the beginning of their second (BSc) or third (BDS) year. They also have to do this whilst also dealing with the apprehension that most dental patients seem to share.
Action research to help us understand and develop our practice in this context where patient safety is paramount has, understandably, been an academic focus in the School of Dental Sciences for some years. The range of work is as diverse as the students we teach.
The student journey with a focus on the key transitions that are required throughout the undergraduate courses has provided us with a number of interesting research themes.
- Collaborative research with other Dental Schools has allowed us to compare the ability of different student selection techniques to predict future performance.
- The development of competence in essential techniques through simulated but authentic skill development progressing to real life dentistry and competence assessment is another time of essential transition.
- Our work with technology development and the use of electronic portfolio to enhance student’s ability to record and reflect in order to become life-long, independent learners is perhaps one of the largest areas for our research in recent years.
Our action research also engages with the local community (through outreach activities, community health education projects and patient involvement), as well as collaboration with other UK and European schools. Curriculum enhancements and innovations in sign-posting the acquisition of broad professional skills is an area of growing interest and one in which a number of successful innovations are now being published, as is enhancing feedback through self, peer, teacher and patient engagement.
Student support and the management of arising issues has led us to develop peer mentoring and to report on the increasing challenges of managing the ‘student in difficulty’.
An ongoing PhD study involving in-depth literature review and document analysis is currently allowing a full exploration of the concept of professionalism. We perceive that this may well be a starting point for a further broad reaching programme of research culminating in the development of a robust assessment of professionalism which could have an impact across multiple spheres.
The commonalities with aspects of all of the courses run in the faculty are easy to see and we look forward to working with other disciplines and making a full contribution to the new Unit.
Jimmy Steele and Janice Ellis, School of Dental Sciences