171 General discussion 6 educators demonstrating maturation (Chapter 5), as some of them already had the most inclusive educator phenotype at their first interview. Therefore, it would be useful to repeat this research with younger and with less experienced educators; such a study would be expected to yield more participants with growth potential regarding their educator phenotypes. It is difficult to predict how the distribution of the various belief orientations of such a cohort would turn out. Lack of teaching experience may result in more teaching-centred beliefs, since in some studies teaching experience is related to learning-centred beliefs.43,44 At the same time, being educated in more current, up-to-date, learning-centred, curricula, with more emphasis on self-reflection, may also result in more learning-centred beliefs. Finally, we cannot rule out that the finding that educators did not reverse to less inclusive phenotypes in our follow-up study (Chapter 5) is related to our selection of exemplary educators. A study with less motivated or less involved educators might generate different results. The selection of educators who taught in a preclinical setting limits drawing conclusions from our findings for other contexts, in particular with regard to the beliefs about teaching and learning (Chapter 2). Indeed, a postgraduate setting might uncover more learning-centred belief orientations, consistent with the findings of Samuelowicz and Bain.1,45 On the other hand, we assume that the educator phenotype model will be valid in other educational contexts; firstly because the perspectives on being a teacher, once acquired, are deeply integrated into the person of educator; secondly because in developing the phenotype model we used a model from a different context: Korthagen’s model stems from the context of teacher education. Similarly, we expect that the alignment between awareness of educational mission and learning-centred beliefs (see Chapter 4), both deeply rooted, will not be limited to one particular educational context. A future study carried out in other educational contexts could provide further insights. Other suggestions for future research would be, first, to explore the relationship between educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning and their actual behaviours when teaching, through combining interview and observation of individual medical educators. The relevance of our research on beliefs about teaching and learning lies in the supposed relationship between beliefs and behaviours. While a number of studies show a strong relationship between beliefs and behaviours,46-48 this is challenged by others.49-51 Moreover, all of these studies have been conducted outside the context of medical education. Second, it would be enlightening to explore the development of educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning, similar to our follow-up study of educators’ maturation in perspectives on being a teacher (Chapter 5). Such research could provide further insights into whether educators’ beliefs become more learning-centred over time,
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