From Flexner to Rogers: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Origins of Problem-Based Learning at McMaster University Medical School

摘要

Fifty years ago, McMaster University Faculty ofMedicine developed a new approach to undergraduatemedical education based on using biomedical andpatient problems as the starting point of the student’slearning process in a small group setting, guided by atutor. The programme, which opened its doors in 1969,was developed by a team of Canadian doctors led byDrs. John Evans, Bill Spaulding, Fraser Mustard, JimAnderson and Bill Walsh, who together comprised thefirst Education Committee (EC) of McMaster’s Facultyof Medicine. 1 Between 1965, the date of Evans’appointment as Founding Dean of the Faculty, and1972, the date that he left and the first cohort graduated,the EC met weekly to flesh out the new three-yearundergraduate curriculum and its pedagogical ap-proach. The characteristics of this learning method,which came to be known as “problem-based learning”(PBL), has been described in detail elsewhere, 2warranting only the briefest of summaries here; namelythat it was characterized by an interdisciplinary, organ-systems based unit structure to replace the traditionaldisciplinary structure; that students took a lead role inthe learning process and spent the majority of their timeengaged in personal study; a minority of their time insmall group tutorials with lectures rarely occurring; andthat there was no summative assessment during theentire undergraduate curriculum.