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EDITORIAL article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 9 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1533863
This article is part of the Research Topic Interdisciplinary or Interprofessional Learning as Catalyst of Change in Healthcare and Higher Education View all 6 articles
Editorial: Interdisciplinary or Interprofessional Learning as Catalyst of Change in Healthcare and Higher Education
Provisionally accepted- 1 Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
- 2 Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
education, which involves students from different healthcare disciplines working together in training (3) , remain ambiguous (4) education pedagogies within higher education. With limited studies on the global impact of innovative collaborative pedagogies within higher education and healthcare education this research topic was necessary. We also saw this research topic as a "catalyst of change"; a change that can engage, communicate, and coordinate with stakeholders; bringing them successfully along the change journey.We asked authors to describe how they developed and tested new ways of teaching that bring together different fields and professional groups in healthcare and education. We were especially interested in articles that showed how collaborative teaching methods can help global higher education educators, students and leaders prepare for future challenges.To ensure the quality of the selected articles, we created a careful review process to improve the selected articles and enhance their impact. The four-step process is briefly depicted in this figure (1). We first screened the abstracts and redirected those that did not match the criteria to other educational topics. For the selected studies, we provided 2-4 rounds of constructive feedback to help the authors improve the impact of their study through careful revisions. We adopted a transparent process for documentation, and our final decision was always a committee's decision.The accepted five articles presented innovative interdisciplinary or interprofessional education approaches along the continuum of secondary, college, professional education and practice to the global education and healthcare fields. We summarized each article below.Ikavalko et al. (5) used a Problem-Based Learning [PBL] course to bridge the gap between upper secondary and higher education which served as a pedagogical catalyst of change.This article particularly highlighted an innovative interdisciplinary approach for pre-service teachers interested in teaching science education at the secondary level and for secondary students interested in studying science education. It illustrated the interdisciplinary nature with multidisciplinary groups of the pre-service teachers creating the Global Challenges upper secondary course over a university semester. The upper secondary students received the University-student created Global Challenges course as a 6 week-course with multiple collaborative pedagogies. Both the university and upper secondary students were surveyed to assess the impact of the experiences on their learning and themes were summarized in the article. Phillips et al.'s (6) article presented Community colleges, which serve a substantial percentage of students in the United States. They presented an innovative Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics [STEM] education program-a day-long, cross-disciplinary experiential learning event to increase community college students' awareness of accessible applied mathematics disciplines and future career options. Experiential learning is a high-impact pedagogical practice whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience; helping students make connections between the material being learned and workforce skills; increasing engagement with mathematics and science to improve attitudes toward mathematics and science content and careers. This study described an annual one-day event that promoted collaboration of 10 separate disciplines, three campus partnerships, and six community partnerships to create over 25 interactive exhibits around the central theme of math and forensics. Best practices were shared to help other higher education institutions to replicate this innovation in their context. Sujir et al. (7) highlighted a new model of interprofessional education [IPE] offered to Indian dental students during their internship. These students, acquainted with considerable clinical knowledge, would have attained readiness to master additional competencies and empower their complex clinical practices. The elective course accentuated the importance of backward thinking to enhance competencies not achieved through a regular curriculum. The needs assessment surveys vetted competencies were narrowed down to: 1) Business Management, 2) Finance, 3) Marketing, 4) Human resource management, 5) Patient management, 6) Instrument and equipment purchase and maintenance, 7) Clinic design, 8) Legal aspects, 9) Ethics. This model engaged dental practitioners, dental educators, business experts, lawyers, bioethicists, engineers, and architects to teach practice management education through IP collaboration perfectly timed to the start point of clinical practice. The course outcome also utilized important indicators that were pivotal to each competency, and the program evaluation was collected both from participating students and practitioners to cover different feedback facets. Bahattab et al. (8) plotted the frequent, prolonged, and severe humanitarian crises, affecting 1 in every 23 people today, with an increasing demand for the professionalization of Bizarria et al. (9) conducted a narrative literature review to argue about the urgency of curricularization of cross-cultural management in higher education institutions in Brazil. They posit that the increase in digitalization, globalization, mobility, and polarization have ignited this sense of urgency. The review foregrounded studies on cross-cultural management across various industries (e.g., business, healthcare, technology, etc.) and countries/regions of the world. Their thematic analysis revealed the trends of: (i) digital transformation and virtual education; (ii) learning, connectivism and formative experience; (iii) knowledge management and communities of practice; and (iv) conflict management. They concluded that the field needs to embrace intercultural sensitivity as an essential skill for leading global teams. This is especially important in times of polarization, when intolerance of differences has proven challenging. Leaders should reflect with openness and empathy on the different worldviews and paradigms of cross-cultural management. Each of these articles illustrates how interdisciplinary and interprofessional education pedagogy could be applied to the global higher education or healthcare fields. While each of these studies have different limitations, as a collection, they illustrate new ways of teaching and training that can bring together different fields and professional groups in healthcare and education.
Keywords: interdisplinary education, interprofessional education, Interprofessional collaboration, Healthcare education, higher education, Teaching, Research, pedagogic innovation
Received: 25 Nov 2024; Accepted: 20 Dec 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Gomaa, Quinn and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Nahla A Gomaa, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
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