First class

Tonight was the first week of "Current Research and Theory in Curriculum." I'm back in school, after a long time away. I was talking to Cheryl and she was saying how excited she was before starting her first class: I felt surprisingly anxious. I've done a lot of thinking about this. Why do I want to do a Masters Degree anyway? I do a lot of teaching and curriculum development, and some education administration, and certainly it would be nice improve my skills and knowledge in these areas. But the real reason is that I feel like I have reached a plateau in my professional development. It's a happy plateau, and I like the view from here, but I need some new challenges.

But there are so many things that interest me! Philosophy, theology, literature, art, history, political theory, economics... Why am I doing a Masters in Education, when I could take courses in these areas? Because somehow, I think this will have a more practical benefit in my career. I wish I had a clearer picture of what I am hoping to accomplish, but as my favorite quote says, "Some people never learn anything because they understand everything too soon."

One of the weaknesses I am trying to "manage around" is my difficulty in learning names and faces, so I'm really working on that. It's a diverse group, with dentists, pharmacists, dental hygienists, nurses, and an assortment of physicians (surgeons, a family doctor, residents, etc.). I'm the only psychiatrist. I'm pleased about that: it's good to get a variety of perspectives.

At the end of the course, I'll have to write a retrospective commentary on the course, so keeping a blog should be useful. I also will be doing a 'curriculum development project.' I can already tell the problem will be choosing between options. Right now, my list includes; our interprofessional learning elective, developing a narrative foreclosure grand rounds presentation, incorporating self-reflection in the Med II pt/dr curriculum, BLS in pt-dr, designing a humanities curriculum for psych residents. There's probably more, too.

Karen Mann spoke, and some of the points that struck me were:

1. Curriculum should keep changing - it's not about 'getting it right' and then leaving it in place forever.

2. Knowledge, skills, and attitude together form 'competencies.'

3. Too much focus on discrete competencies can distract from consideration of integrated performance.

4. How far should students be allowed to determine their own objectives? What should be core and what should be optional? In the UK "Tomorrow's Doctors" document, they suggest students should be allowed to determine 20% of their material through self-selection. This was particularly relevant to me today, because I was teaching Med II students, and I'm always aware that many of them would not choose to be there if given the option. Med school isn't about training the undifferentiated general physician any more, but pre-specialty specialization.

5. Our IPE elective should probably include specific teaching about collaboration as part of the planned curriculum, and not just part of the delivered curriculum. We also need to think about the experienced curriculum. I wonder if we can get honest feedback from the students about their experiences.

My homework is to get a copy of a document which is a 'driver for developing curriculum' and 'interview the document'. I'll post a copy of my assignment here on my blog.

I have a generally positive feeling about this, which for a pessimist like me, is a good start.

Ideation

I've been reading a book on identifying your strengths, and when I did the on-line self-survey, one of my main strengths was 'ideation', which seems to mean, 'coming up with ideas.' This fits with what the author of "Refuse to Choose" (I've been reading a lot of books like this lately) suggests, which is that there are some people who excel at creating ideas and that you are not meant to follow through on all of them. While that's a liberating concept in many ways, the fact is that I do have to take action on at least some of my ideas if I want to advance in my professional life. The problem is, which ones?

As I start my Masters degree, my mind is swimming with ideas about what I would like my first project to be. I have so many areas of interest. How am I going to focus enough to get anything done?

One thing the strengths book suggests is that in order to excel, you need to build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses. Putting my ideas into action is one of those weaknesses I need to learn to manage around.