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Group teaching for final year students in Mosul, Iraq
Author(s) -
SHIKARA I. A.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2923.1978.tb00354.x
Subject(s) - feeling , independence (probability theory) , medical education , teaching method , reading (process) , mathematics education , psychology , medicine , political science , social psychology , law , mathematics , statistics
Summary Since the introduction 5 years ago of the full‐time scheme for medical teachers in Iraq, it became possible to apply many methods of group teaching, including ‘Seminars’, ‘Tutorials’ and ‘Student Clinical Meetings’, as well as the usual ‘Bedside Teaching’, especially for final year students. The results of these innovations, based on answers of recent graduates to a questionnaire, indicated that approximately 80% of students found them of value. The nature of medical education, and especially the clinical aspect, makes group teaching a particularly appropriate method, and the Department of Medicine in Mosul started to concentrate on different methods of group teaching after the establishment of the full‐time scheme for medical teachers in 1972. Group teaching, in general, constitutes those teaching methods that aim at generating free communication between the teacher and his students on the one hand, and among the students themselves on the other. There is now a general feeling among medical educators that students are being over‐lectured, and that an alternative method to formal lectures should be established. Group teaching encourages independent activity on the part of the student, fosters critical thinking, promotes independent reading, develops the ability to speak fluently to a small or large audience, makes students more active in organizing their own studies, evokes greater independence and respect for their own powers and, lastly, makes teachers understand their students' needs better than before (Walton, 1973). The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the procedures adopted in Mosul for teaching final year students, and to analyse the students' reaction to various methods throughout the last 3 years of their teaching.