Actions (Can) Speak Louder Than Words

I am pleased to present in this issue Teaching and Learning in Medicine's (TLM's) third annual Conversation Starters series. I would like to extend a hearty “Welcome back!” to those familiar with the series and eager to read this year's thoughtful commentaries. Readers new to this series can learn what Conversation Starters is all about from the detailed introduction I provided for the first installment in 2015¹ and the second in 2016.²

It is exciting, once again, to work with the Group on Educational Affairs (GEA) and the Medical Education Scholarship Research and Evaluation (MESRE) Section to spotlight the kind of groundbreaking inquiry presented each year at regional GEA spring meetings. These meetings, with their local settings and relatively modest head count, provide an excellent opportunity for social networking and scholarly community building around the medical education questions we all share. Over the past few years, we have sought with Conversation Starters to extend the face-to-face discussions going on at these meetings to national and international participants, broadening community development and deepening inquiry, with the hope of preserving the sense of presence and collegiality of in-person conversation. Our intent has been to foster collaboration and advance scholarship, ideally promoting journal article publications and successful GEA grant proposals. Activity around the commentaries published previously in this series—online views, citations, social media sharing, follow-up publications, and new collaborations—suggests that we are on the right track. We are eager to build on this momentum by sharing new thoughts about intriguing pilot work presented this spring. Please join our expert commentators in considering the implications of these studies for theory development, educational practice, and larger programs of research.

This year's commentaries were stimulated by a diverse set of investigations that went beyond verbal self-report data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups, commonly used in medical education research. The selected studies each featured analysis of actual behavior, from ongoing surgical procedures to different forms of technology-enabled instruction. The Central Region commentary “Teaching, Learning, and Performance in the Surgical Workplace: Insights from the Examination of Intra-Operative Interactions” ponders the implications of microlevel descriptions of surgical work for scaffolding trainee learning, conceptualizing attendings' real-time entrustment decisions, and exploring the collaborative construction of workplace learning and performance. The Western Region commentary “Emergent Is Authentic: A Sociomaterial Perspective on Simulation-Enhanced Interprofessional Education” considers how the concept of simulation authenticity may be shaped by applying a sociomaterial lens to examining “what happened” in an interprofessional training exercise. The Northeast Region commentary “‘Yes, and …': Exploring the Future of Learning Analytics in Medical Education” brainstorms the deeper understanding of learning process that may be achieved by advancements in learning analytics, including novel metrics and approaches to analyzing learner-system interactivity. Finally, the Southern Region commentary “Teachers as Learners: Developing Professionalism Feedback Skills via Observed Structured Teaching Encounters” examines how simulation, which requires trainees to act out their abilities and assumptions, can help medical students engage the cognitive and social complexities of providing peer feedback on professionalism.

Collectively, these commentaries, and the studies on which they are based, illustrate the tremendous value of using deep analytical approaches to construct new understanding of teaching and learning in medicine. Behavioral analyses provide the kind of direct observation on performance that is thought to be central to coaching professional practice. One learning opportunity offered by this year's Conversation Starters installment is role modeling the close examination and reflection needed to comprehend what is happening in a given developmental experience and what it might mean for what to do next.

Before closing, I would like to thank the regional MESRE Section chairs who helped with selecting the abstracts featured this year: Nicole Borges (Southern Region), Christy Boscardin (Western Region), and Steven Rougas (Northeast Region). Making final selections truly was difficult given the generally high level of quality among the options and the novelty of the research questions asked. The role of these MESRE representatives in helping to create this difficulty, through years of dedicated service to cultivating scholarship in medical education, must be acknowledged. It is the best sort of problem our community can have. I also cannot overstate how grateful I am to the expert commentators who volunteered their time and offered their voices to this year's conversations. Their enthusiasm to participate speaks to the positive direction Conversation Starters has taken but says far more about the collaborative spirit of scholars and educators in the health professions. It was a tremendous pleasure, once again, to learn from the experts as we thought hard about medical education together. We hope that you will enjoy the result of this effort and that you will share what you learn with others. We look forward to hearing your voice in TLM in the future.

GEA informational links

GEA

2018 National Grant Program: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/gea_sections/mesre/

•	Pre-Proposals due February 2018

Regional programs

2018 grant proposals due:

•	September 2018
•	Call for Proposals anticipated March 2018

2018 Spring Meeting abstracts due:

•	December 2017

GEA Central Region (CGEA)

Grant Program: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/cgea/

Spring Meeting: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/cgea/meetings/257276/cgea_meetings.html

GEA Northeast Region (NEGEA)

Grant Program: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/negea/453486/negeagrants.html/

Spring Meeting: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/negea/meetings/

GEA Southern Region (SGEA)

Grant Program: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/sgea/awards/

Spring Meeting: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/sgea/meetings/

GEA Western Region (WGEA)

Grant Program: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/wgea/

Spring Meeting: https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/wgea/meetings/

Notes

¹ “Let's Talk …” (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10401334.2015.1084849)

² “Keeping the Conversation Going” (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10401334.2016.1217699)