Informing the teaching process: lessons from the educational sciences.

Until recently, most medical educators emphasized the art of medical education and largely ignored the fundamental science of learning underlying their basic practices. However, over the last decade medical education has evolved into an academic discipline in its own right, where scholarship can be demonstrated in the generation of new knowledge or the development of more efficient or effective strategies for transferring knowledge to others. It is essential that all medical educators familiarize themselves with the fundamental literature of the learning sciences and build upon it as it applies to their individual practices as medical teachers. Recent developments in the discipline of medical education and their implications for teaching will be the focus of this year's Ideas for Medical Education column. As associate editor for 1999, the author of this paper describes the problems associated with mastering the scientific underpinnings of medical education and outlines the kinds of questions that will be addressed in the Ideas feature throughout the year.