Lakshmi Krishnan and Vinayak Jain Were Part of the 2022 Teaching, Learning & Innovation Summer Institute

Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan and MWHC Internal Medicine Resident Vinayak Jain were part of the 2022 Teaching, Learning & Innovation Summer Institute (TLISI), hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, which ran in a hybrid format from Monday, May 23 through Thursday, May 26.

Vinayak Jain spoke about “Critical Pedagogies in Medical Education”, and was joined by Dr. Krishnan as faculty advisor and senior author for the project. Their project on critical pedagogies in medical education advocates for critical pedagogy as means to meet contemporary educational goals to foster a deeper awareness of the complex context in which medical practice operates today. This involves moving from a naïve view of the world, to a more critical one that is ‘conscious’ of the biological, social and historical aspects of power and privilege. By asking learners to think critically about social patterns and structural causes of ill health, one can promote opportunities to nurture their critically reflexive commitments towards a just and equitable society. In Jain’s words, “as part of the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative, our project aims to develop frameworks to incorporate critical pedagogies in Undergraduate Medical Education. We specifically focus on the deterministic ways through which Problem Based Learning impose a biomedical worldview of disparities in healthcare among medical students, and propose novel ways to develop a contextual ‘worldview’ of illness”. “By leveraging critical pedagogies, we hope to facilitate a robust understanding of social determinants and transition from a competency based medical education to one that is a capability based“, he highlights.

Watch the recording (GU login required).