About this Research Topic
The health professions continue to evolve and change rapidly as more opportunities and challenges emerge. Hence, health professions educators are required to be adaptive and nimble in their creation and adoption of teaching and learning innovations. These innovations have included teaching with technologies like virtual reality, gamification, online applications, and artificial intelligence. Innovations also include “know-how” such as emotional intelligence and ways of approaching the learning process through student-centered learning experiences grounded in the cognitive science of learning.
Scholarship related to identification of the best uses of different innovations is difficult. The same innovations have proven to be engaging in some contexts and burdensome in others. Additionally, simulation-based education continues to incorporate innovations in how health professions educators are taught with more focus on effectiveness of the simulation educator including applications with distance simulation. Training and development for health professions and simulation educators is becoming more formalized, yet gaps on effectiveness of training and development efforts persist. Faculty effectiveness, especially as it relates to educational innovation adoption, is difficult to measure; and demonstration of related competencies is in its infancy.
The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together state-of-the-art examples of scholarship in health professions education related to the awareness and appropriate adoption of innovation, which is broadly defined as an idea, practice, technology, and know-how. Evidence about the current state of emerging innovations, effectiveness of innovations and evidence about the competencies needed for teaching in our evolving environments are all areas of interest for this collection. All types of scholarship can support this focus, including analyses based on primary quantitative and qualitative data collection, secondary data analyses, literature reviews, and methodological infrastructure/tool development. Additionally, scholarship investigating how these innovations have influenced health professions educators, including their training and development, is part of the goal of the collection.
The scope of this collection covers any innovations that are applicable to professional development and implementation for health professions educators. More specifically, we invite scholarship related to how educators prepare themselves for meeting the needs of their students, given the changing roles and innovations available to both faculty and students across learning environments worldwide.
Examples of topics of interest include:
• Analyses of innovation related to the evolving roles of health professions educators;
• Reviews of educational innovation adoption by health professions education faculty, especially related to artificial intelligence-linked applications;
• Exploring factors associated with professional development, training, and effective educational innovation adoption by faculty.
• Simulation-based educational innovation applications for faculty development;
• Faculty innovation in resource-constrained environments in low- and middle-income countries.
• Methodological challenges associated with studying educational innovations by faculty in health professions education and critical research needs associated with generating and evaluating educational innovations;
• Methodological considerations associated with health professions education faculty competencies.
Theoretically-focused analyses are welcome as long as they are linked to applications.
Scholarship related to identification of the best uses of different innovations is difficult. The same innovations have proven to be engaging in some contexts and burdensome in others. Additionally, simulation-based education continues to incorporate innovations in how health professions educators are taught with more focus on effectiveness of the simulation educator including applications with distance simulation. Training and development for health professions and simulation educators is becoming more formalized, yet gaps on effectiveness of training and development efforts persist. Faculty effectiveness, especially as it relates to educational innovation adoption, is difficult to measure; and demonstration of related competencies is in its infancy.
The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together state-of-the-art examples of scholarship in health professions education related to the awareness and appropriate adoption of innovation, which is broadly defined as an idea, practice, technology, and know-how. Evidence about the current state of emerging innovations, effectiveness of innovations and evidence about the competencies needed for teaching in our evolving environments are all areas of interest for this collection. All types of scholarship can support this focus, including analyses based on primary quantitative and qualitative data collection, secondary data analyses, literature reviews, and methodological infrastructure/tool development. Additionally, scholarship investigating how these innovations have influenced health professions educators, including their training and development, is part of the goal of the collection.
The scope of this collection covers any innovations that are applicable to professional development and implementation for health professions educators. More specifically, we invite scholarship related to how educators prepare themselves for meeting the needs of their students, given the changing roles and innovations available to both faculty and students across learning environments worldwide.
Examples of topics of interest include:
• Analyses of innovation related to the evolving roles of health professions educators;
• Reviews of educational innovation adoption by health professions education faculty, especially related to artificial intelligence-linked applications;
• Exploring factors associated with professional development, training, and effective educational innovation adoption by faculty.
• Simulation-based educational innovation applications for faculty development;
• Faculty innovation in resource-constrained environments in low- and middle-income countries.
• Methodological challenges associated with studying educational innovations by faculty in health professions education and critical research needs associated with generating and evaluating educational innovations;
• Methodological considerations associated with health professions education faculty competencies.
Theoretically-focused analyses are welcome as long as they are linked to applications.
Keywords: educational innovation, faculty professional development, educational research, educational training, educational research methods, simulation, emotional intelligence, health professions education, health professions educators
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
