This article critically examines three assumptions underlying recent efforts to advance interdisciplinary research-defined in this article as communication and collaboration between researchers across academic disciplines (e.g. Sociology, Psychology, Biology)--and examines these assumptions' implications for health professions education research…

Ensuring trainees develop the flexibility with their knowledge to address novel problems, and to efficiently build upon prior knowledge to learn new knowledge is a common goal in health profession education. How trainees come to develop this capacity to transfer and transform knowledge across contexts can be described by adaptive expertise, which…

The study of adaptive expertise in health professions education has focused almost exclusively on cognitive skills, largely ignoring the processes of adaptation in the performance of precision technical skills. We present a focused review of literature to argue that repetitive practice is much less repetitive than often perceived. Our main thesis…

Context: "Tensegrity" is a structural-organization model initially described in the architecture and design fields. By applying tensegrity design principles to biological structures, scientists have developed "biotensegrity" to explain a complex systems-on-systems structural-organization philosophy for integrated human…

A teaching philosophy statement (TPS) is a brief, deeply personal narrative that gives insight into an educator's perspective on the teaching enterprise. A TPS is typically comprised of a reflection on the educator's values and beliefs, a description of what happens during the learning process, and statements about how teachers and learners…

Health professions education (HPE) is built on a structural foundation of modernity based on Eurocentric epistemologies. This foundation privileges certain forms of evidence and ways of knowing and is implicated in how dominant models of HPE curricula and healthcare practice position concepts of knowledge, equity, and social justice. This invited…

The first-year student experience is attracting attention within Australian higher education, where heightened concerns exist in relation to the successful transition of students to university life. This paper presents a critical reflection of the process involved in an action research project in a collaboration between academics and first-year…

Despite collaboration among different professions being recognized as fundamentally important to contemporary and future healthcare practice, the concept is woefully undertheorized. This has implications for how health professions educators might best introduce students to interprofessional collaboration and support their transition into…

This brief communication proposes a possible model for training clinically practicing Physician Assistants/Associates (PA) for a transition into academic medicine. Demand for full-time PA educators is rising. Most new full-time PA educators come from clinical practice and find the transition challenging, resulting in attrition. There is no…

The contexts and methods for communicating in healthcare and health professions education (HPE) profoundly affect how we understand information, relate to others, and construct our identities. Multimodal analysis provides a method for exploring how we communicate using multiple modes--e.g., language, gestures, images--in concert with each other…

This paper argues that abductive reasoning has a central place in theorizing Health Professions Education. At the root of abduction lies a fundamental debate: How do we connect practice, which is always singular and unique, with theory, which describes the world in terms of rules, generalizations, and universals? While abduction was initially seen…

Interprofessional education (IPE) and entrustable professional activities (EPAs) represent two topics in health professions education that have attracted significant attention in recent years. IPE (when different health professionals learn with, from and about each other with the aim of optimal care) has an inherent focus on the collective. EPAs…

This paper discusses the value of a Freirean liberatory perspective in community colleges, countering the traditional "second chance" or "social reproduction" viewpoints attributed by scholars to the education offered in these institutions, emphasizing its vital need in science and healthcare careers education. I explore the…

Constructivist teaching approaches rely on students to be active participants in their learning. A flipped classroom is a constructivist approach that requires the students to complete pre-learning activities outside of class. Thus, in class the students can practice and engage in team-based discussions and teacher guided learning. We delivered…

Training art therapists requires fair grading systems that equitably assess learning styles and developmental levels of academic aptitude, particularly with longer term art assignments. As students progress in their studies, a contemplative education framework offers a self-directed learning environment that strives to share grading…