Experimental or RCT research designs: a crisis of nomenclature in medical education

Medical education research draws on a history of quantification espoused by the physical sciences and more recently framed by theorists and researchers from the education and psychological disciplines of the late 19th to early 20th centuries. In the 1920s, the tradition of experimental research design in education achieved a heightened period of interest with the work of psychologists like Edward Thorndike (i.e., his research on learning processes led to the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology). The evolution of quantitative research in medical education stems from researchers’ interest in using a systematic empirical methodology to investigate and develop models, theories and hypotheses related to educational phenomena.