An instructional skills workshop for medical teachers: design and execution.

Medical education in the past decade has become increasingly concerned with what educational science can contribute to the training of physicians. Although several programmes over the years have been designed to serve such an end (Miller, 1961 and 1962; Rosinski, and Miller, 1962; Ericksen, 1964; Husted and Hawkins, 1963; Seegal, 1964) none has emphasized the development or refinement of teaching skills : theory has been emphasized rather than practice. Yet a great deal can be taught and learned about the 'art' of teaching. Those educators charged with training elementary and secondary school teachers have been concerned for many years with teaching instructional skills. Recently they have been experimenting with such new approaches as microteaching to improve upon the conventional 'student' or 'practice' teaching that has had only limited success. Medical education, however, in its explorations of the interface between medical teaching and education science, has placed little emphasis on the skill components of instruction. The workshop described herein is a pilot attempt to correct this deficiency. The emphasis is on performing instructional skills, not on listening to or reading about them. The workshop's rationale is based upon the application of principles of learning skills to a