Martimianakis, Maria Athina

Abstract Context Myth busting engages scholars in the critical examination of commonly accepted but poorly evidenced claims with the goal of instilling quality and trust in knowledge making. The debunking of such knowledge “myths” and associated misguided practices purportedly serves to avert resources and attention from wasteful and dangerous scholarship. We address the myth that “all myths in medical education deserve to be busted”. Methods Using a critical narrative approach, we searched the medical education literature for orientations to myths and myth busting, and reviewed this literature analytically drawing from the sociology of science and Merton's concepts of manifest and latent functions. The results of this analysis are presented in the form of a narrative that deploys the articles reviewed to explore the utility of myth busting for medical education reform and begins with a brief exploration of the etymology of “myth” and how meaning making is related to symbols, practices and storytelling. Results Our analysis revealed the important function of myths in the social practice of medical education and practice. A deconstruction of five salient examples of the contemporary myth in medical education (the myth of the “ideal candidate”, the myth of “cut‐throats”, the myth of “cadaver stories”, the myth of “learning styles”, and the myth of “patient information leaflets”) demonstrates that myths continue to have material effects even after they have been busted. Conclusions Our analysis makes evident that myth busting disrupts, renegotiates and reconstitutes socio‐epistemic relationships rather than simply correcting falsehoods. We also argue that myths play important and inescapable roles in the social practice of medical education and the negotiation of values, and in constructing the conditions for group change and transformation. Imperatives related to humanism , compassion and patient engagement offer a healthy humanising counter‐mythologising that we suggest must survive any contemporary myth‐busting endeavour aimed at improving medical education practice.

In this Commentary, the authors explore the scoping review by Lawrence and colleagues by challenging their conclusion that with over 25 years’ worth of “ambiguous and seemingly ubiquitous use” of the hidden curriculum construct in health professions education scholarship, it is time to either move to a more uniform definitional foundation or abandon the term altogether. The Commentary authors counter these remedial propositions by foregrounding the importance of theoretical diversity and the conceptual richness afforded when the hidden curriculum construct is used as an entry point for studying the interstitial space between the formal and a range of other-than-formal domains of learning. They document how tightly delimited scoping strategies fail to capture the wealth of educational scholarship that operates within a hidden curriculum framework, including “hidden” hidden curriculum articles, studies that employ alternative constructs, and investigations that target important tacit sociocultural influences on learners and faculty without formally deploying the term. They offer examples of how the hidden curriculum construct, while undergoing significant transformation in its application within the field of health professions education, has created the conceptual foundation for the application of a number of critical perspectives that make visible the field’s political investments in particular forms of knowing and associated practices. Finally, the Commentary authors invite readers to consider the methodological promise afforded by conceptual heterogeneity, particularly strands of scholarship that resituate the hidden curriculum concept within the magically expansive dance of social relationships, social learning, and social life that form the learning environments of health professions education.