Enhancing teachers’ awareness of student-centred beliefs, identity, and mission: an exploratory mixed-methods evaluation of a critical-incident workshop

Faculty development in health professions education has largely focused on enhancing teachers’ student-centred competencies, with less attention to the development of student-centred beliefs, identity, and mission. Korthagen’s onion model implies that developing these inner aspects is essential since they impact the extent to which teachers demonstrate student-centred teaching behaviours. This exploratory study evaluated a faculty development workshop designed to raise teachers’ awareness of their student-centred inner aspects in problem-based learning (PBL) settings. This was an exploratory, mixed-methods, single-group pre-post study evaluating the feasibility of a two-hour, critical-incident-centred workshop and its immediate perceived impact on teachers’ awareness of their student-centred inner aspects (beliefs, identity, and mission). The workshop consisted of three parts: identification and formation, tension exploration, and actualisation planning. Participants were 26 purposively sampled tutors, with at least one year of tutoring experience, from two medical schools in Indonesia. Data were collected using the Student-Centred Perspective of Teachers (SCPT) questionnaire, an evaluation questionnaire, and group interviews. Twenty-six participants attended the workshop, completed the evaluation questionnaires, and participated in group interviews. Descriptively, the largest increases in participants’ self-reported SCPT scores were observed for identity (mean change = + 0.27; 95% CI = 0.09, 0.45), mission (mean change = + 0.22; 95% CI = 0.06, 0.38), beliefs (mean change = + 0.19; 95% CI = 0.01, 0.36), and competencies (mean change = + 0.17; 95% CI = 0.02, 0.32), with confidence intervals not crossing zero for these domains. Meanwhile, behaviour and environment showed smaller and less consistent changes. Interview themes indicated that reflecting on the critical incidents, sharing opinions and experiences, and creating an actualisation plan were associated with these self-reported shifts, while certain environmental factors (e.g., clinical duties) were perceived as barriers to developing student-centred inner aspects. This exploratory study provides preliminary evidence that a short, critical-incident-centred workshop is feasible and may enhance teachers’ awareness and self-reported student-centred beliefs, identity, and mission, although several workplace-related challenges remained difficult to change. As this was a single-group, immediate pre-post design, longitudinal and behaviourally-oriented evaluation is still needed to determine whether these self-reported changes translate into sustained changes in teaching practice.