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EDITORIAL

Delivery of instruction, or producing learning

In a long article entitled From Teaching to Learning-- a New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education, in CHANGE (Nov/Dec 1995, p 13), Robert B. Barr and John Tagg (Palomar College, San Marcos, California) discuss the shift from the Instruction Paradigm to the Learning Paradigm. In the instruction paradigm the mission of a teaching institution is to teach, to lecture, to deliver courses. In contrast, in the learning paradigm the mission is to produce learning. The authors stress the word 'produce': not 'provide', not 'support', not 'encourage' (although it will, of course, do all of these) but to 'produce' learning. It is a question of responsibility and it represents a shift from taking the responsibility for providing quality instruction (lecturing, talking) to taking responsibility for student learning. The college is responsible for the degree to which students learn. Students are co-producers of learning: they can and must take responsibility for their own learning. In a favourable environment, when the two agents take responsibility, the result is syner- gistic. The aim is to produce learning with every student by whatever means works best. In the instruction paradigm, the authors say, the faculty member is an actor, a sage on a stage: in the learning paradigm, the faculty member is an inter-actor, a coach interacting with a team.

In the series of articles offered in this issue of Biochemical Education the situation in some of Britain's medical schools is discussed. A number are changing to problem-based learning and the changes are being brought about by the realisation that there is too much information, and that in any case information by itself is of little value. What is important is to be able tofind information and use it to solve problems. In this situation students do not just learn information, they learn how to find it and learn how to use it, and in this way develop lifelong skills. Teachers in these schools undergoing change are finding it demanding work to become inter-actors, changing the habits of a lifetime in some cases, but are also discovering that it is rewarding to be a facilitator of student learning.

Features Section: Problem-based Learning

Editor: C A Smith, The Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

This issue of Biochemical Education contains a somewhat different Problem-based Learning Page to the usual sub- missions of problem questions, or articles related to, or critiques of, problem-based learning in general. Rather, it reports a one day symposium, How Much Biochemistry Should a Good Doctor Know?, which was planned by the Educational Group of the Biochemical Society and organ- ised by Drs Hywel Thomas (UDMS, London) and Tim Harrison (University of Leicester) as part of the 654th Meeting of the Biochemical Society at the University of Leicester in April 1995.

The symposium was organised largely in relation to the report, Tomorrow's Doctors, from the General Medical Council of the UK, and, in particular, to those parts of the report concerned with the biochemical education of

medical students and the inculcation of lifelong study skills in medical graduates. Problem-based learning has 'obvious' utility in the latter and, indeed, is generally con- sidered to have originated in North American medical faculties in the 1950-60s, although its origins predate this (see, for example, references in Ref. 1. Thus a substantial proportion of the symposium was concerned with problem-based learning and related topics. Hence it is with pleasure that the Problem Page relates the pro- ceedings of the Education Group's symposium to a wider audience.

Reference 1 Smith, C A, Powcll, S and Wood, E J (1995) Biochem Educ 23,

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BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 24(2) 1996