183 Summary 7 SUMMARY This research explores the beliefs medical educators hold on the process of teaching and learning as well as on being a teacher, within the context of learningcentred education. Gaining a deeper understanding of these beliefs is important to support the development of medical educators, and thus promote the quality of student learning. In the general introduction (Chapter 1), we explain the concept of learningcentred education, more often referred to as student-centred education, which is the teaching approach adopted by most medical schools around the world. Characteristic of learning-centred education is the focus on the student and their learning, with the educator acting as a facilitator of the student’s learning processes, rather than merely as a transmitter of factual knowledge. To properly fulfil this role, educators’ perspectives or beliefs need to be taken into account, as beliefs are important drivers of behaviour. In the introductory chapter we provide an overview of current insights into beliefs about teaching and learning, explain why learning-centred beliefs are preferred in contemporary education, and why we need to develop a classification of medical educators’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge in medical education context (research line 1). Previous studies have demonstrated that in medical schools with learning-centred curricula, a substantial number of medical educators still hold teaching-centred beliefs. This is problematic because it hinders the effective implementation of learning-centred education. Therefore, we need to better understand which factors influence educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning. Since beliefs about teaching and learning have been associated with beliefs about being a teacher in non-medical educational contexts, this research subsequently focuses on medical educators’ perspectives on being a teacher (research line 2). In order to properly distinguish these two lines of research, we refer to ‘perspectives’ instead of beliefs in the line of research which focuses on being a teacher. We introduce the Korthagen model, a theoretical holistic model developed in the field of teacher education, which we used to explore educators’ perspectives on being a teacher. The model distinguishes and relates various perspectives on being a teacher, presented as concentric levels, namely, from periphery to core: the environment, behaviours, competencies, beliefs, identity, and mission. Mission refers to that which inspires and drives educators. Finally, we discuss the need to increase our understanding of how medical educators develop in their perspectives on being a teacher, to help promote the maturation of educators towards a more explicit focus on the student and their learning.
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