Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, 1200 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Med Educ. 2011 Aug;45(8):785-91. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03921.x.
Medical education research has been an academic pursuit for over 50 years, tracing its roots back to the Office of Medical Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York, with George Miller. As the field has matured, the nature of the questions posed and the disciplinary bases of its practitioners have evolved.
I identify three chronological 'generations' of academics who have contributed to the field, at intervals of roughly 10-15 years.
Members of the first generation came from diverse and unrelated academic backgrounds and essentially learned their craft on the job. A second generation, emerging in the 1980s and 1990s, consisted of individuals with PhD-level training in relevant fields such as psychology, psychometrics and sociology, who actively chose a career in health sciences education, often during graduate work. These individuals brought a strong disciplinary orientation to their research. Finally, the proliferation of graduate programmes in medical education means that we are now seeing the evolution of a new type of academic, often a health professional, whose only discipline is medical education.
I propose that we should strike a balance between seeking to create a separate specialty of medical education and continuing to actively recruit from other academic disciplines. I believe that the strong disciplinary roots of these individuals are a critical element in the continuing growth and progress of medical education research.
医学教育研究已经是一个 50 多年的学术追求，可以追溯到纽约州立大学布法罗分校的医学教育办公室，其创始人是 George Miller。随着该领域的成熟，提出的问题的性质及其从业者的学科基础也发生了变化。
我确定了三代对该领域做出贡献的学者，他们之间的间隔约为 10-15 年。
第一代成员来自不同且不相关的学术背景，基本上是在工作中学习技能。第二代出现在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代，由具有心理学、心理测量学和社会学等相关领域博士水平培训的人员组成，他们积极选择从事健康科学教育的职业，通常是在研究生阶段。这些人将强烈的学科导向带入了他们的研究中。最后，医学教育研究生课程的普及意味着我们现在看到了一种新型学术人员的出现，他们通常是医疗保健专业人员，唯一的学科是医学教育。
我建议我们应该在寻求创建一个独立的医学教育专业和继续从其他学术学科积极招聘之间取得平衡。我相信这些人的强大学科基础是医学教育研究不断发展和进步的关键因素。
