Faculty Development in Teaching Skills: An Intensive Longitudinal Model

Although reflection contributes to the personal growth of clinician-educators and is important for effective teaching, few teaching skills programs report its use. The Johns Hopkins Faculty Development Program in Teaching Skills, first implemented in 1987 as a theoretically grounded, longitudinal model for faculty development of clinician-educators, comprises a set of conditions intended to promote reflective learning. This paper describes the program and reports evaluation results for 98 participants and a comparison group of 112 nonparticipants between 1988 and 1996. Participants met with facilitators weekly for nine months for 3.5 hours, in stable groups of four to six individuals. Educational methods used across seven content areas emphasized relationships and collaboration, and included information provision, experiential learning with reflection, and personal awareness sessions. A pre-post evaluation design with comparison group measured changes in self-assessed teaching and professional skills, teaching enjoyment, and learning effectiveness. A post-only evaluation design appraised overall program quality, educational methods, facilitation, learning environment, and perceived impact of participation. Program participants had significantly greater pre-post-change scores than nonparticipants for all 14 outcomes (p < .05). Multiple regression modeling indicated that program participation was associated with pre-post improvement in all outcomes except administration skills, controlling for all participant and nonparticipant baseline characteristics (p < .05). All measured programmatic characteristics were highly rated by participants. Experiential methods with reflection were rated significantly higher than information-provision and personal awareness sessions (p < .001). Evaluation results demonstrate a positive impact of this alternative approach to faculty development on clinician-educator perceptions of their attitudes and behaviors towards learners and colleagues.