Supervisors’ untrained postgraduate rubric use for formative and summative purposes

Using rubrics can benefit the quality of assessment and learning. However, the conditions that stimulate or obstruct these benefits have been insufficiently studied. One underinvestigated claim is that rubrics are no substitution for good instruction and assessment and that teachers need training in utilising them. This is relevant since teachers in daily practice often use rubrics without training. In this study, we investigated data from a rubric filled out by supervisors who were not specifically trained in its use and used the rubric voluntarily. The rubric was designed for assessment moments with a formative and summative purpose. Results of quantitative analyses of 313 rubric forms indicated that the rubric was used flexibly: supervisors vary in using the rubric for the formative and/or summative purpose and in the criteria they assess. More criteria were omitted during formative use than during summative use. Some of these omitted criteria were most predictive for the final grade. This raises serious concerns with respect to the tension between flexible rubric use and constructive alignment. To understand the quality of rubric use in education, future research is needed on supervisors’ perceptions toward rubrics use. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.2021390

Preparing Medical and Nursing Students for Interprofessional Feedback Dialogues

Background: In healthcare education, preparing students for interprofessional feedback dialogues is vital. However, guidance regarding developing interprofessional feedback training programs is sparse. In response to this gap, the Westerveld framework, which offers principles for interprofessional feedback dialogue, was developed. Approach: Using the Westerveld framework, we developed and implemented an interprofessional feedback intervention for 4th-year nursing and 5th-year medical students. It encompasses two half-day workshops comprising small group sessions, interactive lectures, and a goal-setting assignment for the rotations. This paper describes the intervention and reflects on students’ self-reported goals, as learning outcomes, to inform future interprofessional feedback dialogue education. Outcomes:To understand student’s learning outcomes, we coded the content and specificity of 288 responses to the goal-setting assignment. Students indicated they mainly aimed to improve their feedback actionability, but contrastingly set – largely unspecific – goals, addressing the initiation of feedback dialogues. To better understand the process of setting these goals, we held three focus groups (N = 11): aside from the Westerveld framework, students used previous experience in rotations, outcome expectations, and personal characteristics as sources in their goal-setting process. Reflection: The contrast between students’ aims to improve their actionability and their goals to initiate dialogues, suggests that overcoming practice barriers to initiating dialogues are conditional to developing other feedback dialogue aspects. These and other goal conflicts in the workplace may hinder them setting specific feedback dialogue goals. We recommend explicit discussion of these challenges and conflicts in interprofessional feedback dialogue education.</p

Leadership practices in collaborative innovation: A study among Dutch school principals

School principals and teachers are expected to continuously innovate their practices in changing school environments. These innovation processes can be shared more widely through collaboration between principals and teachers, i.e. collaborative innovation. In order to gain more insight into how school principals enact their leadership practices in leading collaborative innovation, we interviewed 22 school principals of primary, secondary and vocational education in the Netherlands. All participants have implemented the same collaborative innovation programme, aimed at enhancement of collaboration between teachers and school principals within schools, that has already been implemented by 900 Dutch schools. They were interviewed twice during the implementation year. Interview transcripts were analysed using an open coding strategy looking for leadership practices. Based on 11 leadership practices, we described two main leadership patterns: school principals enacting leadership practices as either a team player or as a facilitator. We conclude that our findings suggest a wider repertoire of leadership practices than is reported in previous studies. Future studies would need to address the generalisability of the practices and patterns as found in this specific context of collaborative innovation

Describing and measuring leadership within school teams by applying a social network perspective

Despite the growing number of studies that acknowledge a crucial role of distributed leadership within schools, limited knowledge exists on how to describe and measure this multi-faceted concept. In a social network study with 130 respondents, from 14 Dutch school teams carrying out collaborative innovation, we theoretically describe three core aspects of the social interaction process of distributed leadership: collective, dynamic, or relational. Furthermore, we empirically explore how to measure all these three aspects of distributed leadership from a social network perspective, whereas most research focuses on either collective or dynamic. Our findings indicate that three network measures (density, reciprocity, indegree centralization) form a coherent combination to measure distributed leadership in school teams in terms of collective, relational, and dynamic, respectively. Furthermore, based on the combination of measures we found differences in distributed leadership between school teams. Thus, adding the relational aspect in addition to the collective and dynamic aspects seems to be informative to measure distributed leadership. Our study motivates to take a social network perspective, instead of the mostly used aggregation approaches, to measure distributed leadership in school teams

The Westerveld framework for interprofessional feedback dialogues in health professions education

Interprofessional feedback dialogues play a crucial role in educating the adaptive team members that health care practice requires. The aim of this study is to develop principles for interprofessional feedback dialogues, to support healthcare education on feedback processes in an interprofessional context. A critical review of the literature on (interprofessional) feedback, and discussions with local experts resulted in an initial framework. This was input for a two-round expert panel with international, leading scholars in the fields of feedback (n = 5) and interprofessional education (n = 5). Experts showed increased agreement and consensus over the rounds resulting in a framework, called the Westerveld framework, structured around seven criteria: Open and respectful; Relevant; Timely; Dialogical; Responsive; Sense making; and Actionable. The framework contains columns with feedback dialogue principles for information givers and users, and columns with additions to be taken into account in an interprofessional healthcare context. Structuring the information giver and user columns around the same criteria, emphasises shared responsibility of participants in a feedback dialogue. The integration of interprofessional additions facilitates transfer to the healthcare context. The Westerveld framework can provide guidance to teachers and students in interprofessional education, contributing to both student and teacher feedback literacy

Making knowledge clips with patients: What learning mechanisms are triggered in medical students?

Objective: To prepare medical students for a rapidly changing healthcare landscape, where new means of communication emerge, innovative teaching methods are needed. We developed a project-based learning course in which medical students design audiovisual patient information in collaboration with patients and with students in Communication and Information Sciences (CIS). We studied what learning mechanisms are triggered in medical students by elements of a project-based-learning course. Methods: In this qualitative study, twelve sixth year medical students that participated in the course were individually interviewed. Data were analyzed according to the principles of qualitative template analysis. Results: We identified four learning mechanisms: Challenging assumptions about patients’ information needs; Becoming aware of the origin of patients’ information needs; Taking a patient's perspective; Analyzing language to adapt to patients’ needs. These learning mechanisms were activated by making a knowledge clip, collaborating with patients, and collaborating with CIS students. Conclusion: Collaborating with patients helped students to recognize and understand patients’ perspectives. Working on a tangible product in partnership with patients and CIS students, triggered students to apply their understanding in conveying information back to patients. Practice implication: Based on our findings we encourage educators to involve patients as collaborators in authentic assignments for students so they can apply what they learned from taking patients’ perspectives

Challenges and learning outcomes of educational design research for PhD students

Educational design research (EDR) is described as a complex research approach. The challenges resulting from this complexity are typically described as procedural, whereas EDR might also be challenging for different reasons, specifically for early career researchers. Yet challenging experiences may be noteworthy in the process of learning to do research and becoming a researcher. To explore this issue further, we engaged in a collaborative self-study, and conducted a narrative cross-case analysis of two PhD candidates’ experiences of engaging in EDR, focusing on challenges and learning outcomes. We find indications that the challenges of EDR might be more related to EDR’s relatively new and minority position in educational sciences and the role a (early career) researcher needs to assume in EDR. Retrospectively, the challenges appear closely related to learning outcomes, which are described in terms of a more profound understanding of research (quality) and of oneself as a researcher. As such, insights gained by self-study of research practices provide a complementary perspective to existing literature on EDR and becoming a researcher

Reflections and review on the audit procedure : Guidelines for more transparency

Arguably, quality assurance is more complicated in qualitative studies than in quantitative studies. Several procedures for quality assurance are available, among which the audit procedure as proposed by Akkerman, Admiraal, Brekelmans, and Oost. In this article, we reflect on this procedure based on our own experiences as well as based on a review of studies in which the audit procedure was employed. More specifically, we discuss (1) the choice for an auditor and the relationship between auditee and auditor and (2) the function of the audit. We propose that future auditees (a) explicitly report on the auditee–auditor relationship, (b) explicitly report on the function of their audit, and (c) have their audit trail documents available for review. With this methodological position paper, we aim to contribute to the current call to make social science studies and their conclusions more transparent and thereby to enhance the quality of qualitative studies

Reflections and review on the audit procedure : Guidelines for more transparency

Arguably, quality assurance is more complicated in qualitative studies than in quantitative studies. Several procedures for quality assurance are available, among which the audit procedure as proposed by Akkerman, Admiraal, Brekelmans, and Oost. In this article, we reflect on this procedure based on our own experiences as well as based on a review of studies in which the audit procedure was employed. More specifically, we discuss (1) the choice for an auditor and the relationship between auditee and auditor and (2) the function of the audit. We propose that future auditees (a) explicitly report on the auditee–auditor relationship, (b) explicitly report on the function of their audit, and (c) have their audit trail documents available for review. With this methodological position paper, we aim to contribute to the current call to make social science studies and their conclusions more transparent and thereby to enhance the quality of qualitative studies