Simulation-Based Learning in Teacher and Medical Education to Facilitate Collaboration Competences

This E-CER investigates effective professional collaboration. Collaboration competences are increasingly vital for professional practice, yet these competences are under-developed in many workplaces and in professional learning research. Their development requires purposeful learning. We know that intensive researcher-led interventions are effective in supporting this learning, but they are also resource-intensive. Research must identify effective, scalable interventions to facilitate learning to collaborate.

We uniquely focus on cross-fertilisation of research on teacher and doctor learning, explored in the recent Learning and Instruction Special Issue, and the utilisation of simulation-based learning (SBL). SBL, from low-tech to mixed and virtual reality ‘approximations-of-practice’ (Grossman et al., 2018), is an emerging innovative model of professional learning in medicine and teacher education. SBL is yet to be fully utilised in research on learning to collaborate. We will study simulation-based learning (SBL) as an innovative approach to professional learning, advancing the evidence base on effective scalable SBL-interventions to support the development of collaboration competences.

This Centre will establish the new interdisciplinary topic of research on facilitating professional collaboration skills learning with simulations in two exemplary fields, medical and teacher education and professional development. Through the multi-disciplinary team of participants, this E-CER aims to integrate research on SBL-design, learning and instruction, and workplace practices across education and medicine to create a framework connecting real-world relevant SBL-design with evidence-based professional learning mechanisms. This will inform the development of new rigorous practice-based research methods and tools to study collaboration competence development, while maintaining a focus on pertinent current and future challenges across education and medicine.

Impacting on research, we will develop a new and dynamic interdisciplinary research framework on collaborative competence, cross-cutting medical and teacher education, both rooted in and advancing research on learning and instruction. There will be focused opportunities for early career researchers to develop networks in this research area.

Impacting on education, the participants’ networks across teacher, medical and professional education, and collaborations with healthcare providers in the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, US and across Scandinavia will enable the testing and dissemination of findings into practice. The unique novel impact of this project will be the opportunity for teacher and medical education to directly learn from one another.

Working with policy makers, the E-CER will also address the need across the public sector to better understand how to facilitate effective collaboration at-scale.