160 Chapter 6 This outcome is significant as it broadens our understanding of beliefs about teaching and learning out into a more holistic view that incorporates not only cognitive dimensions, but also affective dimensions relevant to student learning and development. It also confirms that specific attention to affective dimensions can positively and powerfully influence the outcomes of learningcentred education,2 and thus has implications for faculty development, as will be described in more detail under the Practical implications section. Our finding that even in medical schools with long standing learning-centred curricula, a significant proportion of the most experienced and engaged educators still held teaching-centred beliefs about teaching and learning suggests that individual development towards learning-centred beliefs is neither easy nor selfevident. We suppose that at least two factors play a role here. First, as the framework clearly illustrates, beliefs about teaching and learning do not just concern a single belief but a whole system of interrelated beliefs, which, in line with Samuelowicz and Bain,1 we refer to as a ‘belief orientation.’ Indeed, we have shown that in the development from a teaching-centred to a learning-centred belief orientation, many beliefs (eight out of the nine) would be required to change. A second factor that may play a role is that, even when the formal educational context of a medical school may embrace learning-centred education, the implicit educational culture of the organisation may still favour teaching-centred beliefs. This may have a constraining influence on medical educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning, as some studies confirmed.3,4 These findings are relevant for two reasons: the persistence of teaching-centred beliefs underscores the importance of our research into why educators hold certain beliefs. Second, they suggest that the environment, i.e. the educational context including the informal teaching culture, may be an important factor influencing the beliefs of educators, which will be further discussed below. From a practical point of view, this implies that faculty development (FD) should pay explicit attention to beliefs about teaching and learning, as confirmed by others.1,5-10 So far, FD programmes still generally focus on the development of competencies, in particular the acquisition of pedagogical knowledge and skills,11-13 for example by giving workshops which train educators how to teach small groups, or how to develop a teaching module. In addition, FD need to pay attention to the educational context. This will be further discussed under the Practical implications section. Perspectives on being a teacher In our search for factors influencing educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning we explored their perspectives on being a teacher (Chapter 3), for which the model of Korthagen (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.2) proved to be a useful model.
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