The Dean's reflection: September

Teaching, learning and assessment: When did we lose the art of teaching?

In an increasingly transactional world, teaching can feel less visible in our day-to-day practice. Clinical workloads grow, service demands rise and educational moments are often squeezed between competing priorities. Yet teaching remains one of the most important things we do.

More than that, teaching is an act of care.

Teaching sits at the heart of our professional identity. The word doctor derives from the Latin docere, meaning "to teach". Long before we were practitioners, researchers or leaders, our profession recognised that part of being a doctor was helping others learn.

This month I have been reflecting on the three pillars of medical education: teaching, learning and assessment.

There is a saying that teaching is twice learning. This is true not simply because we revisit the evidence before we teach, but because education is fundamentally relational. We learn from our learners. Through questions, challenges and dialogue, teaching often deepens our own understanding of practice.

At a time when certainty can seem increasingly elusive, teaching also offers something else. It encourages curiosity, reflection and humility. It reminds us that psychiatry is rarely a world of absolutes. By embedding teaching into our practice, we not only support the development of future psychiatrists, but also improve our own clinical care and professional growth.

The challenge, of course, is how to incorporate teaching into the busy rhythms of clinical work.

Part of the answer lies in broadening how we think about teaching itself.

As Paulo Freire argued, education is much more than simply depositing knowledge into learners. Teaching occurs in classrooms, supervision sessions and case presentations, but it also occurs in corridor conversations, ward rounds and moments of reflection after difficult clinical encounters. It may be planned or spontaneous, formal or informal, unidisciplinary or interprofessional.

Most importantly, effective teaching does not simply transfer knowledge. It inspires people to keep learning.

At the recent Faculty of Psychiatry of Old Age Conference in Cairns, I spoke with trainees about bringing educational moments into everyday clinical work and explored what makes teaching memorable.

A simple formula centred on designing in "ah", "aha" and "haha" moments, combined with Rosenshine's principles of effective teaching, can go a remarkably long way.

I encourage all Fellows and trainees to consider how clinical moments can become educational moments. Whether through protected teaching time, role modelling, feedback, supervision or reflection-in-action, approaching practice through an educational lens can be transformative.

Why? Because teaching changes not only the learner. It changes how the teacher thinks, sees and acts.

Assessment

Assessment is essential. It helps maintain standards, protects the public and provides evidence that trainees are ready for independent practice. Moreover, assessment can and should play a critical role in directing where future learning should happen. Yet assessment also carries burden. An educational system that focuses solely on accountability, without considering its impact on learners, risks undermining the very outcomes it seeks to achieve.

This intersection between standards and wellbeing remains one of the central challenges facing modern medical education.

In 2024 we undertook a survey by the Assessment Team for the Committee for Examinations to better understand trainee experiences. With over 900 responses from trainees and Fellows, the 2024 Burden of Assessment Survey provided clear evidence that our assessment framework is placing a burden on trainees and supervisors and highlighted the need for meaningful reform to ensure assessment better serves its educational purpose and our community.

Over the course of 2026 we have continued these discussions and identified areas where further work is needed. This includes considering how the Psychotherapy Written Case and Scholarly Project might be made more flexible, how trainees can be better supported in securing supervisors, and how assessment processes can be improved without compromising standards.

There are no simple solutions. However, assessment systems should support learning as well as evaluate it, and I am keen to hear your thoughts on how these requirements could be enhanced.

Importantly, these challenges are not unique to our College. Other specialist colleges are grappling with similar questions, including how best to design scholarly and workplace-based assessment requirements for contemporary training environments. There is much we can learn from one another.

Assessment in practice

The burden of assessment is not only educational. Sometimes it is operational.

I would like to acknowledge the impact on trainees who sat the MCQ examination in Melbourne on 18 September and experienced a server failure approximately 15 minutes before the end of the examination. Coming after the MCQ disruption in Sydney earlier this year, this is understandably frustrating and concerning.

Discussions with Pearson Vue are underway to understand how these failures occurred and what further safeguards can be implemented to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.

By contrast, I am pleased to report that the MEQ examination conducted earlier in September, proceeded successfully in a fully online format.

There is perhaps an irony here. As technology becomes more sophisticated, operational challenges sometimes seem to become more frequent rather than less. When they occur, the impact on trainees can be significant and they contribute directly to assessment burden and stress.

This is why wellbeing remains an educational priority.

I was delighted to see strong engagement in the recent The Knowing-Doing Gap in Doctor Wellbeing: A Call for Psychiatric Leadership webinar held on R U OK day. Education and wellbeing are deeply connected. Learners perform best in environments that are supportive, psychologically safe and developmentally focused. Building on this work, a new joint wellbeing strategy between Membership and Education will be developed next year.

Looking ahead

The first round of the new CCPR process is also drawing to a close, with stage 3 IOCAs forming a central component of this work. We recognise that some trainees have encountered practical challenges in navigating the new processes, and communications have recently been distributed to remind trainees and SIMG about the special consideration mechanisms available where circumstances warrant.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge everyone who has contributed to the Australian Medical Council accreditation visit currently underway.

Accreditation has also been described as a central pillar of modern medical education. This is because accreditation has an external assurance function determining whether standards are being met. For our College, accreditation provides an opportunity not simply to demonstrate quality, but to learn, improve and evolve. That is to say, accreditation should be a scaffold for improvement, not simply a report card on performance.

The timing is particularly significant. The visit occurs as the New Fellowship Program Taskforce for curriculum and the Governance Reform Taskforce continue to finalise their work to shape the future of Fellowship training. The insights generated through accreditation will be important as we continue strengthening our educational systems.

At its core, this work is about a simple proposition.

Teaching matters. Learning matters. Assessment matters.

But most importantly, they matter because of the people they serve: our trainees, our Fellows and ultimately the communities who place their trust in our profession.

Warm regards,

Prof Andy Teodorczuk

Executive Dean of Education