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Transnational collaborations in faculty development aim to tackle challenges in resource and financial constraints, as well as to increase the quality of programs by collaborating expertise and best evidence from different centres and countries. Many challenges exist to establishing such collaborations, as well as to long-term sustainability once the collaboration ceases. Using the experiences of researchers from medical schools in Indonesia and Australia, this paper provides insights into establishing and sustaining a transnational collaboration to create a faculty development initiative (FDI) to improve clinical teacher practice. Viewed through the lens of the experiences of those involved, the authors describe their learnings from pathways of reciprocal learning, and a synergistic approach to designing and implementing a culturally resonant FDI. The importance of activities such as needs assessment and curriculum blueprinting as ways of establishing collaborative processes and the bilateral exchange of educational expertise, rather than as a mechanism of curriculum control, is highlighted. The relevance of activities that actively foster cultural intelligence is explored as is the importance of local curriculum champions and their role as active contributors to the collaborative process.

Introduction: Transnational faculty development initiatives (FDIs) constitute a strategy to improve the quality of the teaching staff in medical schools. This study evaluates feedback from participants of an FDI designed as part of a collaborative transnational partnership between researchers of an Australian and an Indonesian medical school. Methods: The FDI was a three-day program that explored four major topics: effective clinical teaching, methods of teaching and supervising in clinical settings, assessment of clinical learners and clinical education in practice. These topics were identified through comprehensive needs analysis and curriculum blueprinting exercises. Each participant (n= 27) submitted one piece of reflective writing and one critical appraisal or teaching/assessment assignment on each topic. Using a thematic analysis approach, two researchers independently reviewed each participant’s written assignments to identify emerging themes. Results: Five core themes were identified. Most revolved around the benefits of the training, especially the learning issues that the participants identified during the FDI and how they could be applied to their local contexts. Additional themes covered participants’ views on the delivery of the FDI and cross-cultural implications. Peer observation of teaching, qualitative assessment and feedback provision were also significant issues raised by the participants. Conclusions: This study presents important lessons for cross-cultural adaptation of best practices in the development and delivery of transnational FDIs.

Teaching clinical reasoning in emergency medicine requires educators to foster diagnostic accuracy and judicious decision-making amidst chaotic ambient factors including clinician fatigue, high cognitive load, and diverse patient expectations. The current study applies the early work of Jurgen Habermas and his knowledge-constitutive interests as a lens to explore an educational approach where physician-educators were asked to make their expert reasoning visible to emergency medicine trainees, to more deliberately make visible and accessible the context-specific thinking that emergency physicians routinely use. An action research methodology was used. The 'making thinking visible' teaching approach was introduced to five emergency medicine educators working in large public hospital emergency departments. Participants were asked to trial this teaching method and document its impact on student learning over two reporting cycles. Based on written reports of trialing the teaching approach, participants identified a need to change from: (1) introducing thinking structures to cultivating enquiry; and, (2) providing explanations based on cognitive thinking routines towards encouraging the learner to see the relevance of the clinical context. Educators described how they developed a more diagnostic and reflexive approach to learners, recognized the need to cultivate independent thinking, and valued the opportunity to reflect on their usual teaching. Teaching clinical reasoning using the 'making thinking visible' approach prompted educators to decrease the emphasis on providing technical information to assisting learners to understand the purposes and meanings behind clinical reasoning in emergency medicine. The knowledge-constitutive interests work of Jurgen Habermas was found to provide a robust framework supporting this emancipatory teaching approach.