Sociomateriality for medical education research: CRADLE at CCME18
28 June 2018
In April, I travelled to Canada for four weeks to visit two centres, the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia, and Dalhousie University. While in Canada, I had the opportunity to present at the 2018 Canadian Conference on Medical Education, Halifax, Nova Scotia (CCME18). Along with A/Prof. Anna MacLeod (Dalhousie University), A/Prof. Mark Goldszmidt (Western University) and A/Prof. Angus McMurtry (University of Ottawa), I co-presented CCME18’s only Education Research Symposium, on the topic ‘Research with Theory: Using Sociomateriality to Explore Complex Medical Education Problems’.
(L-R) A/Prof. Angus McMurtry, A/Prof. Mark Goldszmidt, Dr Rola Ajjawi and A/Prof. Anna McLeod.
CCME is the largest gathering of medical educators in Canada, and the theme for this year’s conference was Competency Based Medical Education: Navigating the Winds of Change. CCME18 sought to challenge attendees to consider how they teach competency based medical education, what might be the best implementation strategies, how to measure the impact of such strategies, and how educators can better prepare through their own professional development.
Our symposium aimed to introduce the audience to the concept of sociomateriality, by proposing sociomateriality as a powerful means of helping medical educators to grapple with complex challenges in medical education research. Sociomateriality is an umbrella term for numerous theories that have common principles, including foregrounding the material and focusing on practice as a unit of analysis. A conceptual challenge with a sociomaterial orientation to research is thinking about materials as having agency. With actor-network theory, materials have agency in relation to another actor – hence the actor-network hyphen. The research focus is on what happens – the actual – rather than what is intended. This is particularly relevant as much of medical education research relies on interview data, with less that utilises actual observations of practice.
The symposium was well-attended, with questions related to theory and method with lots of potential for untangling complexity within medical education research. Working with the team was a joy, with lots of potential for future collaborations! The conference itself was also an excellent opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues and to make new ones. Hopefully a few will be coming to visit CRADLE in 2019 – watch this space!
Amongst the various conference activities I did get a chance to wander the streets of Halifax and sample lots of local food, with a few days exploring the beautiful coastline of Nova Scotia, including Lunenberg, Mahone Bay, Wolfville and Peggy’s Cove. I would visit again in a heartbeat.
