Defining medical education scholarship: Its evolution and its importance

Abstract

Understanding the definition of medical education scholarship and its underlying theoretical constructs is essential to constructing medical education and supporting learning across the continuum. There continues to exist uncertainty surrounding defining and enacting medical education scholarship. This uncertainty results in an inability for educators to conduct medical education and scholarship and may result in missed opportunities for educators and learners across the continuum. For this paper, the authors define medical education scholarship as endeavours that are purposefully undertaken and may surpass the borders of those traditionally defined as research or innovation. Medical education may take place in areas of discovery, integration, application, teaching, and engagement. This definition is based on works by Boyer, Glassick and Shulman. This paper describes the contribution that each of these seminal works has made to advance the definition of medical education scholarship. The differences between medical education scholarship and creative professional activities as well as daily work are explored throughout the paper. The paper concludes with a call to develop, demonstrate, promote and support medical education scholarship and the faculty who are focused on undertaking related activities.

Keywords

• education scholarship
• education theory
• medical education scholarship