ON TEACHING AND LEARNING

The phenomenal advances in medical science during the last generation might suggest to the unwary that contemporary medical education is an unqualified success. Medical educators, however, have not been disposed to accept this view. In the last decade they have swept aside a host of curricular practices and educational procedures honored by tradition and comfortably familiar. One currently being challenged is the widespread belief that teachers are born, not made, and its corollary that the process of teaching and learning cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny and analysis.

A small group at the University of Buffalo, a strange alliance of medical teachers and educationists, undertook to examine this question five years ago. An annual Summer Seminar on Medical Teaching is one outcome of their effort. The Association of American Medical Colleges was an early co-sponsor of this event, and latterly has continued the venture independently with the assistance of the