Faculty Development for Mastery Learning

Abstract

Faculty development in the health professions historically involves knowledge and skill improvement in at least 5 domains: (a) professional development, (b) health professions education, (c) clinical and educational research, (d) professional communications, and (e) ethics—teaching and patient care. This chapter focuses on the singular domain of health professions education and uses simulation-based mastery learning as a platform to explore key concepts. Expert educator-coaches are integral to successful mastery learning (ML) curricula and require highly specific skills. Inadequate educator preparation jeopardizes the demonstrated benefits of mastery learning. This chapter presents a discussion about approaches tailored to prepare simulation educators to use a ML framework. We focus on three main areas: (a) healthcare simulation educator development in general; (b) specific learning needs for ML simulation educators including the ML knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) educators require; and (c) strategies that support educator development for ML.