117 Educational beliefs, identity and mission 4 medical schools, both with learning-centred curricula implemented more than 15 years earlier, and the selection of highly engaged, exemplary educators with longstanding experience. However, our unexpected finding is in line with previous studies reporting that in medical schools with learning-centred curricula some of the educators maintain teaching-centred beliefs.4,11 This finding underscores the sharp boundary between teaching-centredness and learning-centredness, which cannot be easily crossed. The transition to a learning-centred belief orientation means a profound shift in which multiple, often deeply-rooted beliefs would be required to change.4 This observation further emphasises the need for future studies to explore how we can encourage the development of learningcentredness through faculty development initiatives for medical educators. Implications for practice Thus our study has implications for faculty development in promoting learningcentred education. In addition to the growing attention on educational identity formation in faculty development,19,30,31 we recommend that faculty development interventions also pay attention to the underlying educational mission. That is, our findings support the recommendation of Steinert and Mc Donald21 that faculty development should not only focus on the what and how of teaching, but also on what it means to educators to teach, in order to enhance the effectiveness of medical educators. In addition, we suggest that, to promote learning-centred education, it is important not only to help medical educators reflect on who they wish to be as educators, but also on why they teach, that is, what drives and inspires them. If educators have a clear mission to foster student learning, this may strengthen their awareness of their educational identity and their role as facilitator of student learning, consistent with their learning-centred beliefs, even if the informal educational culture does not support learning-centredness. We consider that recommendations for developing and supporting an educational identity also apply to helping educators develop an educational mission. We highlight those recommendations that we believe are specifically relevant in relation to our findings, which concern reflection, meaningful relationships with others, and context. In faculty development studies, reflection on the ‘self’ as well as on the teaching and learning process has been shown to strengthen the development of an educational identity,19,31,32 and has also been suggested for the development of learning-centred beliefs.11,26,33 We believe that reflection can also be valuable to help educators develop an individual educational mission. Since affective aspects predominate in the articulation of an educational identity and mission, we believe that meaningful relationships with others can serve as an
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