143 The maturation of medical educators 5 their dissatisfaction. A first option is to learn to come to terms with an adverse educational context, allowing them to shift focus to their qualities as educator. A second option is to change their academic role from education to more clinical, administrative, or research work. Two of the participating educators who did not grow to a more inclusive phenotype referred to this coping strategy in their second interviews. A third option is to discontinue working in academia,19 which happened to one of the participants included in the first interviews. Our conclusion regarding the influence of context fits into a ‘social-relational’ perspective of how educators mature, which conceptualises maturation as constructed through social interaction in cultural contexts.4 In future research it may be useful to further explore whether the Critic phenotype differs from the other three phenotypes and presents a more temporary stage. From an ‘individualist’ perspective, which situates maturation within the person,4 we conclude that maturation as a medical educator appears to occur via developmental stages. In the first stage, exemplary educators showed an awareness of important educational competencies, which was then followed by a growing understanding of one’s educational identity and subsequently by a deeper understanding of one’s educational mission. Interestingly, at all three stages, maturation is generally motivated by the task, identity, or mission as a physician. A parallel between the development as an educator and as a physician has been reviewed in two retrospective inquiries into the maturation of exemplary medical educators20 and mentors.21 Although factors considered influential to maturation varied by developmental stage, our findings across all stages underscore the importance of individual proactivity and motivation.22 They also underscore the importance of the workplace setting, rather than formal faculty development settings, as the main context where maturation occurs, consistent with previous research.1 In addition, we conclude that maturation is a multifactorial process in which intrapersonal aspects and meaningful experiences interact. The extent to which these factors play a role differs per developmental stage. These conclusions imply that, to support the maturation of educators, supervisors in career development should encourage educators to balance their teaching tasks with other academic work. In addition, faculty development initiatives need to be varied, preferably extending over a long period of time and embedded in the workplace such as through communities of practice.23 As Steinert24 advised, faculty development should target all of the roles that medical educators play, consistent with our findings that medical educators explicitly link their maturation as an educator to that
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