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Hello, my name is Sai and I'm a Surgical Undergraduate Teaching Fellow at St Mary's Hospital. I teach 3rd and 6th year medical students at Imperial College 

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Hello, my name is Sai and I'm a Surgical Undergraduate Teaching Fellow at St Mary's Hospital. I teach 3rd and 6th year medical students at Imperial College 

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Long before the terms ‘pedagogy’ and ‘andragogy’ became a part of my vocabulary, I found that I had a particular passion for education. Prior to commencing my medical studies, I worked as a guitar tutor, as well as a maths tutor for primary school children. I feel that delivering a successful teaching session and seeing your students develop can be one of the most satisfying experiences!
This interest in teaching subsequently developed into taking on peer-led teaching roles as a medical student, teaching anatomy and physiology as a ‘Medsoc Teacher’ and surgical skills as ‘Skills Co-ordinator’ of the student surgical society.
At the time of my application to medical schools, the emphasis of the role of the doctor as a teacher in the GMC’s Tomorrow’s Doctors (2009) document contributed to my desire to pursue this career. Through my teaching activities as a medical student, I discovered that as well as increasing my mastery of the taught subject, the process of teaching is deeply rewarding. I am now keen to pursue a clinical academic career, with a particular emphasis on teaching, so I have undertaken a Clinical Teaching Fellow (CTF) role with Imperial College Healthcare Trust to formalise my experience as an educator. I applied to the PG Cert in University Learning and Teaching with Imperial College with a hope that this course will provide structure to my further development as a teacher.
So far, I’ve talked about why I like teaching and what it means to me – but I haven’t considered the role of a teacher in the student-teacher dynamic. Upon reflection, I feel that the role of a teacher in higher education is analogous to that of a catalyst in a chemical reaction; the adult learner should have an intrinsic motivation to transform, and our task is to facilitate this by providing the ‘scaffolding’ and a helpful ‘leg-up’ to allow them to achieve their goals. Malcolm Knowles defined Andragogy as “the art and science of helping adults learn” (Kaufman, 2003) - my experience as a CTF has shown this to be a rather accurate description of the practice of medical education; undertaking the Medical Education Research Unit (MERU) CTF programme  and PG Cert ULT has allowed me to familiarise myself with the ‘science’ or theory of education, whilst my role as a CTF has allowed me to apply these principles to develop my ‘art’. I believe that the stakes are particularly high in medical education; our role is not only to aid students in satisfying the gatekeepers to clinical practice, but to ensure that we are nurturing a generation of doctors that are safe, ethical and caring. It is of paramount importance, therefore, that we strive to achieve excellence in our teaching.

A particular example comes to mind when I find myself considering 'excellence in teaching'; as a third year medical student I attended a bedside teaching session with a Surgical Registrar/Teaching Fellow. During this session I was learnt not only how to perform an abdominal examination, but also how to communicate effectively with patients and how to develop a kind bedside manner; for me, this session helped me change my mindset from thinking as a 'medical student' to thinking as a 'future doctor'. The encouragement from the registrar, his openness for questioning and the environment of 'collaborative learning' that he created certainly had a transformative effect on my approach to learning clinical medicine. As a result - I now strive to achieve similar results with my students; the surgical registrar was a role model for me as a doctor and a teacher, and I hope to embody these values in my educational practice.

References
General Medical Council, 2013. Good Medical Practice.

Kaufman D M. Applying educational theory in practice BMJ 2003; 326 :213

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How have you developed your existing teaching practice?

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How have you developed your existing teaching practice?

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Over the preceding months, I have begun to witness a rather dramatic shift in my teaching paradigm as a direct result of undertaking educational scholarship through my work with MERU and the PG Cert ULT. I believe one of the main drivers for this has been the development of my skill in metacognition and reflection. Through my work with MERU, I have had the opportunity to critically reflect on my process of designing and planning lessons, my practice of facilitating learning and the methods I use for assessment.

One of the biggest developments I’ve witnessed has been through producing a lesson plan for a teaching session in the near future. In the past, my lesson planning had been much less ‘academic’ in its process; typically, I would try to think back to instances in which I received effective teaching and try to emulate this for my students. Planning a structured teaching session, with academic justification for each intervention, was a transformative experience – not just because I increased my understanding of educational theory, but because I was forced to reflect on my practice and justify to myself how each component of my session would meet my learners needs. It is this latter point that I believe is the most salient; planning and delivering an effective teaching session mandates a sound understanding of the learners needs – I now always review Sofia (the Imperial College curriculum map) to identify the relevant learning objectives and produce my intended learning outcomes accordingly, using Bloom’s Taxonomy (Chiu and Anderson, 2020)  to be specific in my aims. The process of justifying my choice of teaching methods, teaching materials and teaching evaluations required me to study the literature for evidence-based techniques. This in turn has helped me to build a repertoire of teaching methods that I can match to the intended aims of a session, and evaluation methods to assess their efficacy.

References

Chiu, T. and Anderson, M., 2020. How Students Learn (session B).

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How do you know that your teaching approaches are effective and that students are learning?

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How do you know that your teaching approaches are effective and that students are learning?

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I have previously had experience in delivering ‘near-peer’ teaching as a student and junior doctor, and have always endeavoured to collect feedback from my students to enhance my practice. However, more recently I had the opportunity to undertake a 'peer observation' and attain feedback through the lens of a fellow educator. Previously I had relied solely on the feedback of my students and, perhaps due to the fact that the feedback was mostly very positive, had become somewhat complacent in the delivery of my teaching. As part of this activity, I was observed by a fellow clinical educator as I delivered a simulation session to 6th year medical students and was subsequently given verbal and written feedback. The feedback I received was overall very positive and commended my rapport with the students, as well as fostering a non-judgemental environment. However, I also received some constructive feedback that regarding aspects of my teaching that I had not previously considered – such as the use of specific structures for feedback. Having understood the value of this process, I now strive to work with my colleagues to undertake mutual teaching observations whenever possible to further develop our teaching practices. Collecting student feedback remains a centrepiece of my reflective practice, and more recently I have focused on taking end of placement feedback to allow the students to comment holistically on my teaching practice.

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In what ways do you want to develop your teaching practice further? 

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In what ways do you want to develop your teaching practice further? 

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As well as a clinician and educator, I am passionate about research – in particular within medical education. As a foundation doctor, I undertook a medical education research project called  'Improving Foundation Year doctors’ confidence with routine suprapubic catheter change using an easily reproducible simulation model', and I managed to get this project published! However in hindsight, my methods were not ideal due to my lack of experience and understanding of educational research; I had relied on quantitive methods to study the efficacy of an intervention on improving confidence in a procedural skill – on reflection, I question the usefulness of ‘confidence’ ratings and Likert scales in a social science like medical education, and would now redesign this study to include qualitative elements to study the ‘why’ and ‘how’. I have enrolled in the 'Research and Teaching' section of the 'Higher Education in Context' module, and I hope that this will help me to better understand educational research and improve my methods!

I have already begun to witness many developments in my teaching practice since undertaking the PG Cert ULT and look forward to furthering my development in this regard. To illustrate this with an example, prior to undertaking this course my teaching methods had been primarily based on using 'PowerPoint' presentations and relying heavily on student interaction - however, in an age of coronavirus and social distancing I have found myself struggling to engage students in the same way on a virtual platform. More recently, I have started to utilise platforms such as Mentimeter (an online quiz format) to allow students to interact whilst remaining anonymous and 'off-camera' - thereby fostering a more comfortable environment for interaction. Through undertaking the 'Digital Learning' module, I look forward to further developing my teaching methods in order to remain as effective as possible in an increasingly virtual teaching environment,.

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Sai, this is a thoughtful and well-presented Opening Teaching Statement which demonstrates your commitment to constructively appraising and critically reflecting on your practice as part of your ongoing development. Your statement includes some nice personal touches which give a good insight into 'you' as a teacher, and your reflections provide clear evidence of your willingness to engage with new ideas and paradigms.

I have made some additional comments in relation to specific parts of the statement, but the one thing overall I think would enhance this piece is some more specific examples and details from practice to illustrate some of the reflections you have included: for example, is there a specific session you have taught or experienced as a learner which has influenced your thoughts about the role of teachers and / or learners and / or how you have developed your existing teaching practice? What happened and how did you feel?

Please remember also that in citing other authors (e.g. Malcolm Knowles) that you should include an appropriate reference, using the Imperial Harvard format. For your Closing Teaching Statement, it will be interesting to hear more about other relevant educational principles that you have applied to your practice and where (and how) these have been most relevant or effective - and, of course, how you know this.

Well done for presenting such an interesting and insightful Opening Teaching Statement, Sai. This represents a great start to the course and I look forward to hearing about how your ideas develop during the year.

Best wishes,
Nikki
n.boyd@imperial.ac.uk

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Please remember also that in citing other authors (e.g. Mal

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Thank you for the lovely feedback, Nikki. I have revised sections of my opening teaching statement buy including further reflections and examples that have shaped my view of the role of the teacher. I have also included an example of my teaching methods prior to this course and how they have developed throughout the early stages of the course e.g. the use of mentimeter.

I have also included references where appropriate.