129 The maturation of medical educators 5 PRACTICE POINTS • Faculty development, aiming to help medical educators mature into facilitators of student learning, is often ineffective • If maturation of medical educators occurs, it appears to follow the developmental stages of awareness of their educational competencies, identity, and mission • The maturation of medical educators may be temporarily distorted due to dissatisfaction with adverse professional or private circumstances • Medical educators link their maturation as an educator to their maturation as a physician, so involving practising physicians as faculty developers may be beneficial • To support medical educators’ maturation, faculty development initiatives need to be varied, extending over a long period of time and embedded in the workplace INTRODUCTION Faculty development aims to help faculty mature into educators and improve their effectiveness as teachers. We use the term ‘mature’ to emphasise our perspective that faculty development is a holistic and ongoing process that takes place in the everyday work setting.1 The most mature educators focus on facilitating students’ learning processes rather than solely imparting factual knowledge,2 particularly in learning-centred education, which has been commonly implemented in most medical schools around the world. We refer to learning-centred education rather than student-centred or learner-centred education since several studies emphasise that the focus in this type of education is primarily on the learning of the learner rather than on the learner themselves.e.g.3 Faculty development (FD) as conducted at most medical schools, however, is often ineffective at promoting maturation.4 This may be due to the educational context, e.g. the hidden curriculum which is not supportive of the educators’ teaching role.4 In addition, the content of FD interventions may need to be refocused. The emphasis of FD has primarily been to improve medical educators’ pedagogical knowledge and skills.1,5 FD may be more effective if
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