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Rethinking the classroom: Interactive, reflective, and technology-enhanced approaches to medical education
Kourosh Amini *
Zanjan University of Medical Sciences , korosh@zums.ac.ir
Abstract:   (18 Views)
The thirteen studies published in this issue of the Journal of Medical Education Development converge on a central premise: learning within the health professions deepens when students become active participants, and when curricula address the psychological and humanistic dimensions of professional formation alongside strict technical demands. Synthesizing this work reveals three distinct bottlenecks that educational policy must address. For a specific subset of interventions, including peer-assisted learning, narrative medicine, and structured clinical training aligned with national competency standards, the primary obstacle is institutionalization. These approaches demonstrate local efficacy but struggle to scale due to inadequate faculty development, lack of protected time, and absent structural mandates. A second, larger category of research, encompassing AI-assisted instruction, gamified training, QR-code laboratory guidance, and simulation-based skills acquisition, faces a different hurdle: evidentiary immaturity. While findings here are promising, they largely derive from small, single-site, cross-sectional designs awaiting rigorous, large-scale replication. Beneath both of these lies a third, frequently neglected layer concerning the learner’s psychological baseline. Cognitive distortions, self-regulatory capacity, and foundational attitudes dictate whether students can actually benefit from even the most impeccably designed intervention. Conflating these three bottlenecks, institutionalization, evidentiary immaturity, and student-level readiness, explains why promising local results so rarely translate into durable curricular practice. Translating the present findings into coherent educational policy requires not simply conducting larger trials, but accurately diagnosing the specific bottleneck each intervention currently faces.
 
Keywords: education, medical, students, medical, clinical competence, educational technology, curriculum
     
Article Type : Editorial | Subject: Medical Education
Received: 2026/07/18 | Accepted: 2026/07/21
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