Teaching for
Transformation

Teaching for Transformation (TforT) is jointly offered by Centre for Faculty Development and Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education.  It was inspired by a growing need in health professions education and practice to prepare clinicians for a multitude of complex social roles. For example, collaboration, advocacy, and systems navigation must be performed within a complex health care system that aims to support compassionate, equitable, and person-centered care orientations, while also managing limited resources, quality, safety, and accountability. Aligned with these needs, TforT brings together educators interested in the theory and practice of transformative education and critical pedagogies.  TforT aims to promote and provide the development of critically reflective/reflexive individuals in relation to their educational roles in health care.

TforT brings together educators, clinicians, administrators, leaders, and scholars interested in the theory and practice of humanistic and transformative education and critical pedagogies and practices. The humanist paradigm of education foregrounds self-actualization and the transformative paradigm of education is grounded in a vision of education as an emancipatory practice in pursuit of equity. TforT participants strive to prepare health professions learners for the humanistic, social-relational aspects of health care practice.

TforT explores varying pedagogies, principles, and practices depending on the year.   For example, dialogic education, arts-based pedagogy, reflective writing, theatre pedagogy, pedagogies of discomfort, aesthetic education, ways of knowing, active learning, experiential learning, portfolio courses.

These educational approaches may support the following health education goals: compassionate care, equity, diversity, and inclusion, interprofessional education and collaboration, critically reflective practice, advocacy and change agency, systems-based practice, professionalism, ethics of research and clinical practice, person-centered care, patient engagement in education, accessibility and universal design for learning.

TforT is a suite of educational offerings, including a conference (offered every 2 years,) the Online Supplements for Education, custom consultations and programming, and a certificate in co-facilitation.

Teaching for Transformation: Conference+  is a three day immersion in the education paradigms and practices needed for today’s health care work. The conference involves keynote facilitated sessions, workshops, submitted short talks, roundtables, and space for open dialogue.  The conference will take place every two years.

Conference+
Teaching for Transformation: Conference+ is more than a conference.  Registration is limited to foster a dialogic learning environment.  Additionally, registrants will gain access to a private website of resources and activities for their ongoing use and an online community of support. 

By becoming a community supporter, your organization can become a part of the TforT community, accessing networks, resources, and shaping the future of the TforT conference, community, and overarching program.

Please direct questions about becoming a Community Support or for more TforT: C+ information here.

The Online Supplements (OS) for Education support transformative, reflexive approaches to education and teaching within the health professions / health sciences. Ideally, these OS’s should be used in conjunction with in-person sessions as educators can then contextualize content, promote dialogue, and debrief activities.

The Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE) coordinates an annual interprofessional foundational learning activity for over 1,000 University of Toronto pre-licensure health and social care students that aims to convey the meaning and importance of partnering with patients/families/caregivers in care. Students engage in small groups with a Readers Theatre script derived from interviews conducted with patients, family members, caregivers and healthcare providers about their perspectives on forming partnerships in the health and social care context. The script reveals some of the impacts of power differences between health and social care users and providers, and it introduces some of the ways that minoritized patients/families/caregivers experience additional challenges navigating the health and social care systems. New this year, the activity will be co-facilitated by pairs of clinical faculty and patient/family/caregiver partners, thus creating multiple opportunities for students to explore the concept of partnership — in the script, in their discussions, and as it unfolds in the room.

Objectives

The objectives of this faculty development opportunity are for participants to be able to:

1. Describe some of the hidden impacts of power relations when patients/family/caregivers enter the health professions education space
2. Identify strategies to reduce the undesirable impacts of power differences when partnering with patients/family/caregivers for education
3. Practice co-facilitating a learning activity about partnership with a patient/family/caregiver partner

Expectations

Participants will be expected to:

• Attend a mandatory virtual preparation session on Monday, January 13, 2025, from 3:00–5:00pm via Zoom
• Co-facilitate at least one of two learning activities held virtually and/or in person:
  • Monday, January 20, 2025 from 3:30–6:00pm (HYBRID – In person at the St. George Campus, University of Toronto OR Virtual on Zoom)
  • Monday, February 3, 2025 from 5:00–6:30pm via Zoom

 To enhance faculty participants’ own learning, the last 30 minutes of the learning activity will be used to debrief the event with all co-facilitators (faculty and patient/family/caregiver partners) together.

Teaching for Transformation: Custom Consultations (CC), a partnered working model in which we co-construct programming and resources to support your own team’s learning and working in relation to transformative approaches to education.

Please email Stella Ng or Lindsay Baker if interested.

Lindsay Baker
Program Co-Lead
lindsay.baker@unityhealth.to

Stella Ng
Program Co-Lead
stella.ng@utoronto.ca