KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Plenary 1
Ronald M Harden, OBE, MD, FRCP, FRCS, FRCPC
The story so far: from village store to supermarket
Biographical sketch
Ronald Harden is Editor of Medical Teacher and General Secretary and Treasurer of the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE). He was formerly Professor of Medical Education, Teaching Dean and Director of the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Dundee, Consultant Physician, and Director of the Educational Development Unit of the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education. He was awarded the OBE by the Queen for his services to medical education. He is also a recipient of the Hubbard Award from the National Board of Medical Examiners in the USA, the MILES Award from National University of Singapore, the Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education and the ASME Richard Farrow Gold Medal, in recognition of the contributions he has made to medical education.
Brian David Hodges, MD, PhD, FRCPC
Assessment of competence in a post-psychometric era
Since the 1970s, assessment of competence in the health professions has been dominated by a discourse of psychometrics emanating from North America that emphasizes the conversion of human behaviours to numbers and prioritizes high-stakes, point-in-time sampling and standardization. There have been many positive effects of this approach including increased fairness to test takers and an explosion of research and development of assessment tools and methods. However, some limitations of an overemphasis on the psychometric paradigm are becoming evident. These include loss of clinical authenticity due to over-standardization, separation of learning and testing, decreased feedback as a result of test security and an under-emphasis on tools that are inexpensive, practical and can be used longitudinally in practice settings. Further, as researchers from anthropology, sociology, linguistics and the humanities enter the field of health professional education attention is being brought to the rhetorical, ethical, socialization and power dimensions of assessment. The future will be dominated by competence-based and workplace-based assessment as the locus of competence shift from competence of individuals to competence of teams. This talk explores the implications of these changes for the assessment of competence in a post-psychometric era.
Biographical sketch
Brian Hodges MD (Queen’s University 1989), FRCPC Psychiatry (Toronto 1994), Masters and PhD in Higher Education (Toronto 1995/2007) is Director of the Wilson Centre for Research in Education, Professor and Currie Chair in Health Professions Education Research at University of Toronto. He was Chair of Evaluation at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (2004-8) and has consulted in New Zealand, Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Jordan, Israel, France, China, Australia and Ethiopia. He holds a diploma in Health Economics from University of Paris (2003) and was named to the board of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique, France (EHESP) in 2007.
Plenary 2
Sioban Nelson, Ph.D.
Careful what you wish for: resolving uncertainty in the assessment of competence
This lecture examines a series of perspectives on the assessment of competence in both nursing and health professional practice more generally. Tracing key issues from regulation to simulation, it raises critical questions to be considered by all those who evaluate practice.
Biographical sketch
Sioban Nelson is Dean and Professor of Nursing at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto, Canada. A registered nurse and graduate of La Trobe University, Melbourne and Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, her work includes publications and projects in the areas of history, professional issues, health policy and the organization of practice. She is editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal, Nursing Inquiry. She is also co-editor, with Suzanne Gordon, of the series ‘The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work’ for Cornell University Press ILR list. Her award winning work, “The Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered” (2006 Cornell) was co-edited with Suzanne Gordon.
Michael P. Malloy, Ph.D.
The elephant in the dark: Assessing lawyer competence
Summary
This presentation examines current approaches to competence assessment in the legal profession. Contemporary study of the objectives and techniques of professional legal education is delineated by two significant markers – the 1992 MacCrate Report, issued by the ABA, and the Carnegie Foundation’s 2007 study, Educating Lawyers. The first alerted the profession and the academy to the relative lack of integrated and continuous professional skills training within the law schools. The second revealed that, fifteen years after MacCrate, advances in skills and competence training and assessment in legal education remain incremental and disjointed. Almost continuously from the issuance of the MacCrate Report, however, empirical studies, experimentation, and professional developments have pushed forward in the search for more effective approaches to professional education and assessment of lawyer competence.Admittedly, it is still the case that students graduating from most accredited U.S. law schools are not re-quired to take any clinical courses. Aside from the qualifying bar exam at the beginning of their professional career (and continuing legal education (CLE) requirements in many states), their competence in even basic professional skills is never formally tested once they leave law school. As a result, the MacCrate Report’s desire for an “educational continuum” in skills education – running through law school and into the profession – has not been fully achieved. Nevertheless, innovative approaches to skills training and competence assessment have been advancing through the scholarly literature, in pilot programs at specific law schools, and in changes in professional standards and procedures. The legal academy and the bar have clearly moved beyond the “point of entry” (single bar exam) approach to the assessment of lawyer competence and are exploring an array of possible supplements and alternatives – expanded clinical and experiential courses in law school, “practice components” in the bar exam, enhanced CLE require-ments, and specialist certification. The presentation considers the extent to which these developments satisfy the goal of an “educational con-tinuum” in competence assessment, and argues for further innovation: adapting incremental licensure from the medical education model, and requiring renewable bar admission along the lines of the board certification model.
Biographical sketch
Michael P Malloy is Distinguished Professor and Scholar at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. An internationally recognized expert on bank regulation and on economic sanctions, Dr. Malloy received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University. In 1982, he entered law teaching as an assistant professor of law at New York Law School, and later served as professor of law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Seton Hall University School of Law. From 1987-1996, he was professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, where he also served as Director of Graduate Studies. He joined the Pacific McGeorge Faculty in 1996. In May 2000, the University of the Pacific honored him as its Distinguished Faculty of the Year. In January 2003, he was appointed Distinguished Professor and Scholar. From June 2004 to January 2008, he served as the first Director of the Pacific McGeorge Center for Global Business and Development. The 2006-2007 Academic Year marks his 25th year in teaching. Malloy is a frequent consultant to the federal government on issues involving bank regulatory policy and international economic sanctions. In addition to his many scholarly articles, he has authored or edited over 70 books and book-length supplements in such fields as banking regulation, economic sanctions, international banking and public international law.
Plenary 3
Stewart Mennin, PhD
Culture, pedagogy and assessment: A view from the bridge
Assessment and learning are co-embedded and inextricable. Research, innovation and standards for medical education have been dominated for many years by educators from North America, Europe and Australia. The rest of the world is challendged to adopt and adapt these approaches. A steady stream of consultants from North America, Europe and Australia have trained people at institutions in the developing world to learn about and implement new methods and `tools´ in assessment and pedagogy. This presentation will examine the limitations and challenges involved in the transposition of `tools´and methods of assessment and pedagogy to other cultures.
Biographical sketch
Stewart Mennin has been contributing to innovation in health professions education for more than 30 years. He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology and former Assistant Dean for Educational Development and Research at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He began his professional career as a research scientist studying reproductive neuroendocrinology and teaching human anatomy. He changed his research focus to medical education and was co-director of New Mexico’s Primary Care Curriculum, an innovative community-oriented, problem-based parallel, track in New Mexico (1979-1993). Professor Mennin has published widely and served as an invited consultant in medical education at more than 60 medical schools and heath institutions worldwide. He is a member of the editorial board of Medical Education and Medical Teacher. Professor Mennin’s current interests include the application of principles and concepts from complexity science to learning, education, and the organization, interaction and development of people working together in the health professions. I believe that schools are best understood as living systems in which learning emerges from the open and free exchange of differences and where the quality of the interactions and relationships we share is central to understanding. Professor Mennin also is also an accomplished musician (clarinet and saxophone) specializing in traditional music of peoples of Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey and the Middle East.
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