Supervised teaching practice: A system for teacher support and quality assurance

Headnote

SUMMARY Supervised teaching practice is practical supervision of teaching under the tutelage of an established teacher. It is proposed as a cost-effective integrated approach to linking the support and development of teachers with quality assurance. In modern undergraduate medical curricula increasing value is placed on teaching and teacher-training. The response to the General Medical Council's demand for a new style of undergraduate medical education requires a system of practical and continuous training which will ensure the highest standard among teachers. Supervised teaching practice offers such a system.

Introduction

The GMC and the bearing Report have recommended that the teaching skills of medical teachers be given high priority, and that medical teachers should be adequately trained and supported (GMC, 1993; NCIHE, 1997). The additional incentive of accreditation has further focussed minds in this regard (Randall, 1999). Undergraduate teaching in medicine has become a high-profile activity which medical schools define, commission and remunerate.

There has been a significant culture shift in medicine in which teaching rather than being an innate talent is now seen to be a skill which can be acquired, developed and refined (Lowry, 1993). The training of teachers requires a balanced programme of theory and practice. Practical training of teachers provides the opportunity to try different teaching methods, and to obtain feedback. It is unrealistic to expect that teachers will undergo this process alone. Some form of guidance or mentoring is essential if the adoption of practical training is to become widespread in medical schools. We have called this process supervised teaching practice and argue in this paper for particular attention to be paid to supervised teaching practice as a way of fulfilling the goals of the new curricula in medical education.

Supervised teaching practice: linking support and quality

Supervised teaching practice is the practical experience of teaching under the tutelage of an established teacher. The triangle of supervisor-teacher-students) mirrors that of trainer-trainee-patient familiar to doctors from a wide variety of clinical disciplines who have been involved in supervised training in special skills (Barker et al., 1997; Weiss, 1998). Supervised teaching practice is commonplace in the training of general practice trainers, and has been incorporated into many GP trainers' workshops (Pitts et al., 1998).

Supervised teaching practice is a method of...