Educational Research: 

Curiosity Killed the Cat...

 

Nurhanis Syazni Roslan

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Many of us have developed our own niche in clinical or laboratory research. However for some areas - if not most- it has become very competitive to publish our findings, thus making KPI a struggle to achieve. To compound this struggle, we educators in medical schools often carry multiple roles; as educators, doctors, researchers and not to mention administrators. How do we find something extra to research on in that short amount of time?

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Can we work on something that we are doing on a daily basis - educational research? Believe it or not, educational research is so robust that in almost every aspect of our undergraduate or postgraduate course, there is something that could be researched! The curriculum diagram (courtesy of AP Dr Muhamad Saiful Bahri Yusoff) highlights some possible research areas.

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Although educational research sounds fairly straightforward, Leedy and Ormrod (2013) reminded us that it is a scientific endeavor, with a meaningful question or problem that needs answering via a properly planned inquiry. It often leads to other research questions. As it covers many aspects, educational research embraces quantitative, qualitative, mixed method and action research study designs.

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To facilitate further discussion in educational research,we provide an expertise directory of our Medical Educationists. As this might be a new undertaking for some educators, we also feature some grants that you could apply for.

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Our guest columnist, Prof Hans Van Rostenberghe shares in ‘From Burden to Gift’ tips for a smooth-sailing ethical approval process in education research.

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As we always welcome and value our students and alumni contributions, we feature a sharing from Ibtisam Abdul Sahak (Year 4) on her experience attending an international conference in Hanoi and Dr. Yeoh Boon Seng’s reflections on patient-centered care.

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We hope that this mini-pack encourages more faculty members to join in educational research. We think that it is more than just meeting KPIs but also helps us in understanding and improving our teaching.

 

The old proverb used to say, ‘Curiosity killed the cat’. We love the newer version:  ‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back’.

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