Teaching visual problem solving in health and social sciences

As a leading hub for research and innovation of Health Professions Education (HPE) worldwide, the School of Health Professions Education (SHE) at Maastricht University collaborated with Erasmus University Rotterdam to initiate project on teaching visual problem solving in health and social sciences. This project is funded by NRO Programme Council for Fundamental Education Research (PROO) - Interlinked Research Projects.

Anna Isahakyan, PhD candidate from School of Health Professions Education (SHE) at Maastricht University will study strategies for teaching X-ray and computed tomography (CT) image interpretation for medical diagnosis, and her PhD counterpart Christine van Nooijen from Erasmus University Rotterdam University will focus on learning to interpret graphs, pictures and animations of socio-demographic trends in social science.

This project explores verbal and non-verbal interactions between master and apprentices in order to identify effective methods of developing visual problem-solving skills. The skill is often developed through master-apprentice interaction. This is an important but underestimated skill in today's society. Very little is known about how to effectively support the learning of visual problem solving. Research into this field is scarce and requires a new theoretical approach and integration of current methodologies. It will provide essential information for educators and visual problem solvers, particularly in relation to visual, often computer-based problem-solving tasks.

Objectives

• Contribute in theory development by going beyond individual accounts of expertise development
• Investigating the interaction between masters and apprentices that leads to expertise development in visual problem-solving