Assessing professional behaviour: Overcoming teachers’ reluctance to fail students

BMC Research Notes

Rashmi Kusurkar³  Gerda Croiset³  Walther van Mook¹  Saskia Peerdeman²  Marianne Mak–van der Vossen² 

[1] Department of Medical Education Development and Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands;VU University Medical Centre Amsterdam, P.O. box 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, the Netherlands;LEARN! Research Institute for Learning and Education, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

关键词: Faculty development;    Professional behaviour;    Professionalism;   

Others  :  1132473
DOI  :  10.1186/1756-0500-7-368

 received in 2014-01-20, accepted in 2014-06-13,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Developing professional behaviour is an important goal of medical education in which teachers play a significant part. Many teachers can be reluctant to fail students demonstrating unprofessional behaviour. We hypothesize that supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in remediation will reduce this reluctance.

Findings

In 2010, VUmc School of Medical Sciences Amsterdam introduced an educational theme on professional behaviour for the bachelor's and master's programmes in medicine with a special emphasis on supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in the remediation process. Information was extracted from the student database on the number of unprofessional behaviour judgments awarded over 2008-2010 (before the intervention), and 2010-2013 (after introducing the intervention), which was compared. To find out if teachers' reluctance to fail had decreased, qualitative feedback from the teachers was gathered and analysed. Since the implementation of the educational theme, the number of unprofessional behaviour judgments has risen. The teachers are positive about the implemented system of teaching and assessing professional behaviour, and feel less reluctant to award an unsatisfactory professional behaviour judgment.

Conclusions

Supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in students' remediation appears to reduce their reluctance to fail students demonstrating unprofessional behaviour.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Mak–van der Vossen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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