51. Scientific Inquiry in Health Sciences Education:Analyzing Junior Faculty’s Teaching Portfolios
- Author
-
Musaeus, Peter
- Abstract
Background: Assistant professors in the health sciences (108 participants from biomedicine, clinical medicine, dentistry,sports, nursing and public health) submitted their teaching portfolio as part of the requirement for a pedagogical course foruniversity teachers at Aarhus University, Denmark. The course introduced participants to concepts and methods to createconstructive alignment and activating teaching and to a teaching portfolio as a means of reflecting upon inquiry and teaching.Design: This study investigated assistant professors espoused beliefs about the role of scientific inquiry in teaching andsupervision of students. The study was a discourse analysis of participants’ written portfolios (each 1-10 pages).Results: Scientific inquiry was constructed by participants as a means to increase students’ motivation (e.g. to pursue ascientific career), emotions (e.g. curiosity) or as a mean to increase students’ deep learning. A large group of participants tooka disciplinary stand to inquiry: They saw the laboratory as an important site of learning inquiry in biomedicine or they taughtabout scientific findings in order to translate findings from biomedicine to clinical medicine. A small group of participantsexpressed the view that students need meta-cognitive skills to develop scientific inquiry. Furthermore, they subscribed to aminimally guided inquiry model whereby students should learn to question their own findings. Even fewer participantsperceived of scientific inquiry in terms of a more systematic approach to higher-level thinking. Thus although participants citedone or more constructivist educational theorists, they did not express a well-articulated notion of inquiry and they providedlimited concrete examples on how to design a conducive learning environment around inquiry or critical thinking.Discussion: The value of this study is that it might enable educational developers to give junior faculty better guidance onteaching and specific feedback on their teaching portfolio in particular in regards to the design of learning activities that mightuse scientific inquiry as means and end in higher education.
- Published
- 2018