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Medical education should emphasize curriculum that stresses the process of learning as opposed to focusing primarily on content mastery. Teaching content and assuming critical thinking skills will develop de novo is inadequate.   Recently, the LCGME has recognized the need to alter the curriculum and has stated that students need a curriculum that teaches them to   “collect or utilize data to test and/or verify hypotheses or to address questions about biomedical principles and/or phenomena.”  This shift moves us away from educational objectives that stress content instead of process.  Since its inception in 1956, Bloom’s Taxonomy has provided and invaluable tool used either directly, or in modified form, to development educational objectives.  Although often overlooked, the original publication of Bloom’s Taxonomy indicated that it should be used to describe observable student behavior and was incapable of measuring the critical thinking process.  Even the higher levels in the cognitive domain (synthesis and evaluation) only determine the student’s ability to demonstrate the required skill and provide no insight into how the process was accomplished.  This type of objective is appropriate if one wishes to describe curriculum content but is cannot be used to describe process.

Employing a pedagogy that stresses the process of critical thinking is essential if medical educators are to move beyond the teaching of content.  Developing objectives to define such a curriculum will more accurately identify the steps educators and students should follow to achieve mastery.  This workshop will provide examples and require active input from the participants to explore how to better accomplish these goals in medical education.  Examples of pedagogy used to help student develop critical thinking skills will to demonstrated and discussed.      

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