Faculty Concerns During a Curriculum Change in a School of Medicine

The only thing constant in design, implementation, and evaluation medical curricula is change. The rate at which medical curricula change has been accelerating over the last several decades and recent calls for reform mean that further changes are on the horizon.

There is a rich body of literature on how change occurs within organizations generally, and educational institutions specifically. The first paper in this work briefly reviews the change literature, focusing in on a particular model of change, the concerns-based adoptions model (CBAM). The use of this model in K-12 education, higher education, and the health professions specifically is reviewed. A brief overview of the history of medical education curricular reform will also be given. From this perspective, it will become clear why the concerns-based adoptions model has a role in the future of medical education reform.

The design and development of a curriculum calls for a parallel system of program evaluation. The purpose of the second paper in this work is to describe the role and use of evaluation theory in the development of a comprehensive curriculum evaluation in a School of Medicine. Specific instruments and results are not presented; the process by which the evaluation plan was developed and the rationale for the process decisions made are the focus of this paper. Additionally, the role that evaluation theory in general, and Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) in particular, had in the development of the evaluation plan is also detailed.

The third paper in this work examines how the diagnostic tools provided by CBAM to assess and address faculty concerns might be useful during curricular change. The use of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) to assess faculty concerns both pre-implementation and early in the implementation of a new curriculum is described and the use of these results to guide faculty development is discussed.