The benefits of being a near-peer teacher

Hall, Samuel, Harrison, Charlotte H., Stephens, Jonny R. and Seaby, Eleanor , Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, UK (2018) The benefits of being a near-peer teacher. The Clinical Teacher, 15 (5), 403-407. (doi:10.1111/tct.12784).

Abstract

Background: Near-peer teaching is used in anatomy education because of its benefits to the learner, teacher and faculty members. Despite the range of reports focusing on the learner, the advantages for the teacher, which are thought to include communication skills, subject knowledge and employability, are only beginning to be explored.
Method: A questionnaire was distributed to the teachers involved in anatomy near-peer teaching at the University of Southampton and Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). This questionnaire was designed using a rating scale of 0–10 to assess teacher perspectives on their level of knowledge, teaching skills and enjoyment of teaching. Free-text responses determined the teachers’ motivation and perceived benefits from the teaching.
Results: Twenty-eight questionnaires were gathered (54.9% response rate), including 20 from Southampton and eight from BSMS. Long-term knowledge retention and better understanding of the material were rated 8.1 and 7.9 out of 10, respectively. Eight responses were from currently practising doctors, who rated how much they now use their teaching skills as doctors as 8.9 out of 10. Of the eight doctors, seven gained points for their foundation programme applications as a direct result of near-peer teaching. The most common motivator for engaging in teaching was to improve subject matter knowledge and the most common benefit was improved communication skills

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Contributors

Author: Eleanor Seaby

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