 Welcome to this podcast where we discuss Professor Chris Lynch's national forum for teaching and learning and higher education fellowship project. Chris's project has considered the formation of professional persons in Ireland. I'm Professor O'Neill Highland. I'm a marriages professor of education in University College cork and former vice president of the university, and at that time I had responsibility among other things for teaching and learning in higher education. At that time, University College cork hosted the National Academy for the integration teaching and learning research and teaching and learning, which, which I chaired, and we did a lot of work with the Carnegie Foundation in Stanford University at the time, and particularly with Lee Schulman's project, Education of the Professionals, which was a very interesting project. He looked at the education of various professions, for example, medics, nurses, clergy, engineers, and a number of others. And the whole concept of education of the professions was for me a fascinating one. And when Chris asked me to, to work, not to work with him, but to ask him questions about this project, I thought, great, I'd love to hear what he has to say about the education of the professional people in Ireland. Professor Chris Lynch is one of five recipients of Ireland's inaugural teaching and learning research fellowships, which are the most prestigious national individual teaching and learning awards in our higher education system. These fellowships were introduced to the sector by the National Forum for the enhancement of teaching and learning and higher education in partnership with the Irish Research Council, which is of course funded by the HGA, and ultimately the Irish Government. These fellowships recognize, reward and celebrate those who have demonstrated a deep commitment to the enhancement of teaching and learning. They provide an opportunities for fellows to share their knowledge and to expand their expertise, and they provide a robust evidence base for future teaching and learning enhancement decision making across the sector. The scholarly evidence generated through these fellowships will contribute to a valued and informed teaching and learning culture in Irish higher education. Now to introduce Chris, Professor Chris Lynch is Professor and Consultant in Restores of Dentistry at University College Cork. He is editor in chief of the Journal of Dentistry, leading international dental journal in the field of Restores of Dentistry. He has served as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Prior to his appointment at University College Cork, Chris was Professor in Restores of Dentistry and Dental Education and a Consultant in Restores of Dentistry at Cardiff University. He graduated with a BDS from University College Cork in 1999, and following time in general practice and junior hospital posts, he commenced specialist training in Restores of Dentistry at Cork Dental Hospital in 2001. He completed his specialist training and passed the Intercollegiate Speciality Fellowship Examination in Restores of Dentistry, FDS, in 2006. He was appointed as a Consultant in Restores of Dentistry in Cardiff in 2006, where he worked for almost 12 years. He successfully defended his PhD on aspects of the micro structural arrangements within human enamel in 2007. He has published widely with more than 200 papers on subjects such as dental education, clinical dentistry, prosthodontics, treatment outcomes, pulp biology and dental materials. In July 2019, Professor Lynch was awarded a very prestigious senior doctorate, DDS, DDSC from Cardiff University based on his published work. And in December 2019, Professor Lynch achieved principal fellow status of the Higher Education Academy, one of the very few people in this country who has that status. He recognized with the prestigious award of excellence in dental education from the Association for Dental Education. He has delivered invited lectures and examined internationally, and he was appointed as an honorary visiting professor at Cardiff University in November 2018. In other roles, he is currently external examiner for the final BDS at Hong Kong University. And I was particularly pleased to see Chris from a faculty of dentistry because it is rare to have somebody who will focus so well on the whole area of teaching and learning. So I was very, very happy when he was awarded an inaugural teaching and learning research fellowship by the National Forum. So now I'm going to ask Chris a number of questions about his project. And I suppose to start with Chris, just in a nutshell, what's your research about? Thank you very much, Anya, and thank you very much for your kind introduction. My research project focused on the formation of professionals in Ireland. In essence, I was learning more or sought to learn more about the development of the professional person, focusing on areas beyond the usual technical skills that we've come to know and expect from professional people. My research has focused on non-technical so-called soft skills such as communication and empathy, but also on important professional skills such as leadership. The ambition for this project was to better inform the higher education environment in Ireland with the aim of enhancing the formation of future professionals. In Ireland, the training of certain professionals is devolved to the higher education institutions by the relevant professional statutory and regulatory bodies such as nursing or pharmacy, my own field of dentistry and medicine. In other professions such as law, the relevant professional body administers the major component of the professional training themselves. As such, there was opportunity to consider the variety of approaches while at the same time collecting information for dissemination to inform future practices in this area. It was hoped that the research outputs would help higher education institutions and the professional statutory and regulatory bodies to reflect on their own approaches to the formation of professionals and further refine these to the needs in their area. I was very conscious when I was reading this, when I was discussing this with you earlier that the teaching council, for example, has devolved to colleges of education and universities the training of teachers both at primary and post primary levels. So again that concept and the higher education institutions work closely with the professional bodies because of course they have to satisfy the standards that are set by the professional bodies. So what prompted you to choose this topic for your fellowship research? I suppose this has been an area of interest of mine for quite a number of years. I've been involved in dental school education for over 20 years now and over 15 years at a senior level. Over the years I've seen many students who were excellent academically and excellent at a technical level, but who sometimes struggled as an independent professional due to issues in relation to their so-called soft skills. And I began to wonder if there were ways we could further support students on their formation or educational journey to become independent professionals in relation to this concern. A significant part of my own research journey has focused on understanding aspects of clinical dental education for indeed I was awarded a senior doctorate from Cardiff University on this subject in 219. While in my earlier days as an educator there was much focus on training students to become technically proficient, increasingly in recent years there has been much more emphasis on professional formation. I spent over 10 years as a senior clinical academic at the School of Dentistry at Cardiff University before returning to Ireland in 217. And during my time in the UK I witnessed enhanced expectations of student professionals by the relevant professional regulators. On my return to Ireland and in discussion with colleagues in dentistry and beyond, such as medicine, pharmacy, teacher education and law, I saw there was a need and a desire to move this subject forward. Yes indeed and I loved your distinction there between training and formation and it was a very strong issue when I started in teacher education way way back. The college I was in at the time was a college of education. It had of course up until then been referred to as training college and our very hard working committed telephonist the old days when you had a somebody on the telephone exchange he'd always say good morning carries for training college. We asked him again and again, please don't say training college please say good morning college of education. We never we never won that battle as far as he was concerned we were a training college. So, yes, I totally agree with you that discussion as to whether what we are doing is training we're certainly not in that sort of in that technical training. It's very much from even even the word formation sometimes is questioned you know as to whether it is even broader than that because you've got to let the person develop as an individual within their profession. Why does the topic matter to those who learn, teach and lead across the higher education community. Why do you think. I think very, very simply as educators and leaders in education and leaders in formation. We want our students to succeed we want all of our students to be successful. We want our students to be the very best and to be graduates and former students of whom we are proud. When we are forming and training student professionals, our ambition is that our students will become professionals who will best serve the needs of society, in the very best ways that they can by identifying or considering the key areas and skills on which different professions place value, we are able to press for change, or at least stimulate and encourage discussions between key stakeholders, and those responsible for the formation of professionals in Ireland. In other words, it is hoped that considering the findings from this project that higher education institutions and professional statutory and regulatory bodies will reflect on their programs for professional formation and adjust and enhance these were appropriate and relevant. And I suppose on a more generic level moving away from the detail of this particular project, the project serves to emphasize the value and impact of projects based around scholarship and educational research. And the potential enhancements they can bring to society in general. The outcomes of this project will have impact for stakeholders with responsibility for the formation of professionals in Ireland. And it's very interesting that you're looking at this topic within the field of dentistry because of course we only have two institutions on the island of Ireland, which have a role in the formation of dentists. And I wondered, you know, has much been written about this either nationally or internationally. What do we already know about this topic from previous literature and previous research. Well, there's been relatively little previous research worked on in this area in Ireland that spans the professions and looks at common issues across all areas. So I suppose within this project, I worked across the sort of horizon of all the professions in Ireland. There are specific research projects which have considered different aspects of professional formation in discipline specific approaches so certain projects have looked at dentistry or medicine but they haven't considered the entire horizon of professions within Ireland. So I suppose again I can talk about my own development and within my own profession of dentistry, I completed a project in 215, which led to a publication entitled what I wish I'd learned at dental school. And we asked graduated and established practitioners for their views and opinions on how, based on their own career and practicing experiences, they would design a new dental school training program. And much emphasis was placed by respondents on the non technical skills such as communication, team leadership and interactions with others. And I suppose as well as this that while there have been important advances in the formation of certain individual professional training programs and again. We make reference on you to the work you've done and the leadership you've shown in formation and development of teachers. I suppose I'll move away from the sense that teachers complete, as you described earlier a training program, and rather they undertook a formation program with the formation of a professional identity as a teacher being a key outcome. Moving away from specific programs and professions most universities now have an embedded graduate attributes program within their own institution, which encourages the development of key skills from graduates of all programs. Looking at the literature, there have been a number of studies which have considered the development of graduate attributes and professionals with some important key work being completed in Australia approximately 10 years ago. And during my reading around this study, a concept that stayed with me was a description of one group of authors in Australia the group led by Baldwin, who considered the development of graduate attributes and nursing students. The authors describe graduate attributes in terms of the yellow brick road wizard of Oz characters describing how three necessary traits needed to be developed in nursing students, knowledge, compassion and professional competence. The authors considered that these traits and attributes can be likened to the basic needs of Dorothy's three traveling companions, the scarecrow who wanted a brain, which is represented by knowledge, the tin man who wanted a heart which is represented by compassion, the lion who sought courage or professional competence, confidence on reviewing the literature. I found that the concept of graduate attributes was more established or embedded in the health profession fields, compared to other areas such as law or accountancy. There was a seam of publications relating to either advocating for or measuring already established graduate attributes approaches and health professionals, particularly in Australia, the UK and North America. In other areas, publications mainly identified or called for the establishment of graduate attributes approaches in professional education. So therefore the aim of my project was to look at aspects of the formation of professionals within the Irish higher education sector. That's very interesting. I'm conscious of way back, and maybe about 20 years ago, when the medical faculty was reviewing and updating its programs. I had a long discussion at that time with the head of the faculty about the whole issue of interpersonal skills and whether, and indeed there was a, they introduced a module on the whole issue of interpersonal skills, you know, with using, you know, using acting and so on, to try and ensure that the students would have some ability to relate. But, and the big question that we discussed at length was whether this should be a compulsory module, but not only a compulsory module, whether it would be compulsory to pass it or not, you know, and it went on the discussion continued I don't know exactly what happens now, but it is a very important point and I know of course in our own in the profession of education and I was involved with Professor George McCarty on developing the nursing studies way back. Again, a very, very important and as you say, I like the parallel with Dorothy's in the Wizard of Oz her three travelling companions I wouldn't have thought of that one before. Very well. So how did you go about the research then. Okay, well, it was a broad ranging project and at the outset I you know carried out the traditional sort of rapid scoping review of the available literature. And again we've talked about some of the findings from that above with the Baldwin work. The purpose of this was to look at the use of certain terms such as graduate attributes and transversal skills and professional competencies by review databases and hand search journals. And the literature reviewed was was fascinating as I said the concept of exploring concepts such as graduate attributes was more involved in certain areas, compared to others. There was a certain sense of clarity by some groups as to what graduate attributes meant. There was a lack of clarity in other areas and there was sometimes there was a confusion as to whether technical skills should be included in the umbrella term of graduate attributes or not. And I convened an initial working group or had a workshop with representatives from some of the professional strategy regulatory bodies and worked with some representatives in key areas from higher education institutions in Ireland. And we discussed, I suppose various terms that arose from the rapid review, including graduate attributes and what they meant for the formation of professionals in Ireland and what they would mean. And again we found some interesting concepts arose from that the person the personnel in Ireland were very familiar with the term graduate attributes but they felt that it will be more appropriate to refer to a graduate character. And I'll discuss that a little bit more and a little bit more detail. We also moved on to surveying the professional strategy bodies and the he eyes in Ireland. And again I worked with an expert panel to form a survey instrument which we distributed to the he eyes and to the professional strategy regulatory bodies. And these saw information about what stakeholders felt were the key skills and attributes of professionals in Ireland. Did you get cooperation from the other professional bodies. I did. And I have to say, I was quite taken by the enthusiasm of the responses I received from a diverse range of professional strategy regulatory bodies and from within the he I sector from people and I think it was the wouldn't normally want a better word to be on my radar or people I would have been familiar with. But there was a consistent sort of desire amongst all people that I encountered towards consensus on defining the professional person and looking to enhancing the role of professionals in areas other than technical proficiency and skill. I suppose the one of the initial working groups I had I worked with. I talked about as I mentioned the graduate character, the character of the graduate or the character of the professional, and it's more than just attributes that it was more the formation in this area was more than just ticking boxes and listing off various things they want the whole package. And in their mind, the graduate character or the desired graduate character of the professional could also be considered as the day one expectations of a new graduate or And we also carried out and carried out surveys of the he eyes and the professional statutory regulatory bodies. And again, we asked various respondents to rank various traits or qualities, you know, ranging from not important to very important. And we asked them about we identified 33 qualities and traits, and we asked them to rank these and to place value on them. And interestingly, attributes or qualities such as trustworthiness, integrity, reliability, and honesty, where the traits and qualities most are commonly rated as very important. And at the other end of the scale, being public spirited negotiation skills, societal awareness, and ability to innovate, while still being considered important were not ranked as highly as the others. Another another area I will come back to is we asked people to rate relevant technical proficiency, and that ranked 19 out of the 1333 qualities and traits considered in the scale of how very important they were. And there is a lot of information I think arising from this to that we need to consider as we move forward and considering the future formation of professionals. And in terms of the, you know, the sort of the day one expectations of new graduate professional. What kind of issues came up in that part of your research. It was, first of all, I have to say, I was reassured, and it was refreshing I wasn't surprised, but it was reassuring and refreshing to note the overwhelming support and enthusiasm and interest I had from the key stakeholders that I encountered and spoke to. Everyone is very enthusiastic about ensuring their formation programs produce for want of a better word or nurture the best professionals in Ireland. When we drilled down and looked into some of the data we received, I was personally, I don't say surprise, but I was slightly taken that certain traits, such as trustworthiness and honesty were ranked were more likely to be ranked as very important, compared to relevant technical proficiency. And personal perceptions before these projects before this project where these sort of qualities, technical proficiency versus honesty and trustworthiness were of comparable importance. But the findings of the study suggests that many stakeholders place greater importance in the areas of trustworthiness and honesty and integrity. And this provides I think a lot of food for thought for me as someone who is responsibility for formation of professionals, but also in the sector itself. Very interesting. Yeah. So, I mean, in terms of the findings of your research, oh yes, just before we get on to that one question that struck me, would you have found a difference between the formation of professionals which occurs largely within a higher education institution. And what you found in let's say in law, where much of their, you know that the professional bodies the regulatory bodies themselves provide the training I'm just wondering. You know, I know that initially when they're that there would have been less emphasis outside the higher education sector on these personal soft skills. Now in more recent years that may have changed and I'm just wondering, how would you compare, you know, how did you find. Was there a difference between the emphasis you found on in courses offered within a higher education institution and those offered by the professional bodies themselves. And that's a very, very interesting question. My response is that I found the approach was the same. And I was quite heartened and I don't like saying that I was quite heartened but I was actually quite impressed. And that's the approach was the same. And you mentioned law and I did engage with the law society and as a professional body they were incredibly enthusiastic about this project and I actually have to take the opportunity to pay tribute to them. Because this was something you know the development of the professional is something that they are really, really, really switched on to in the law society so I did find that the approach was consistent across the programs that were devolved the he eyes, and within the professional bodies that looked after their own training, and everyone is very keen to ensure that our professionals are the very best professionals that we can form. I think your initial findings mean for higher education policy and practice. Well, thank you, I think there's, there's a realm or a wealth of information coming forward from this project that will help us as we move forward. And I suppose I think about, again, when I was doing a lot of this project I was thinking about myself and you know I've qualified as a dentist over 20 years ago and I see how society has changed the expectations of professionals have changed and you know, back in 1989 when I qualified as a dentist. There was a lot of emphasis about being good and being nice to your patients and there was a lot about how good you were at, you know, doing the technical aspects of dentistry, and all that still remains. But there is a greater expectation from society that professionals are set or measure to a different standard. So we have a responsibility to ensure that we are preparing our student professionals to the very best level that we can. And I suppose if you think about it again looking through some of the results I found I had listed in my questionnaires things like effective management skills, effective computer technology skills knowledge of relevant legislation. And these were rated as important, but not as important as other areas such as honesty trustworthy integrity. So if you think about it, the professionals we want are professionals who are of the utmost honesty, trustworthiness and integrity. The challenge that a lot of professionals face nowadays and it's one aspect of it and it's an area where love complaints relates to how professions interact in social media, or misdemeanors and social media, or inappropriate contact with clients or members of the public on social media, or inappropriate advertising, you would expect that professionals who are honest, trustworthy and of the highest integrity won't fall into those traps or those temptations. And in the same way, professionals who are honest and trustworthy and of the highest integrity will ensure that they continue to update their technical and professional skills in relation to the technical aspects of their work. And you would hope that a dentist who is honest and trustworthy or a solicitor who's of the highest integrity will keep themselves up to date with the changing technologies, the changing skills and the changing legislation in their area. Yes, I guess what, in a way, I suppose the scandals, the bank scandals and so on and business scandals that we're reading about and hacking into computers, all of that kind of thing. I'm delighted for all of us just how important it is that our, you know, our graduates are doing in fact have a sense of an ethical sense, a sense of integrity and trustworthy. This is very interesting because of course it was one of the things after the banking scandal and the business scandals that struck me, I must admit that whereas for example in the medical and dental school, the issue of ethics. A module on ethics and ethical behavior, we never had that in our business schools. And so, you know, you can, the great question that often came up as we were planning courses of different kinds in the last 40 years, can you teach that can you teach honesty, can you teach integrity? Of course the answer is yes. You have to, you can certainly develop a module and some, you know, sessions where these issues are discussed, are debated and are highlighted as so important and not just taken for granted. I think society, we took them for granted. And then of course we realized you can't take them for granted anymore. They have to be explicit and transparent in the in the formation of the professionals. So, so reviewing the findings, what hope have you for the future or what expectations? Well, thank you. I mean, again, I have to say, I was very impressed looking at this as an overall macro sort of level looking across the project itself. I was very impressed by the keen desire for all stakeholders from both the professional statutory regulatory bodies and the higher education institutions to continue to engage with each other to further enhance the formation of new professionals in Ireland. And from discussions with the key stakeholders and the relevant body such as QQI, such an approach I think augurs well for the landscape and the future potential such professionals can bring to Ireland. And I have to say in conclusion that it's been a privilege to work with such enthusiastic stakeholders from both professional statutory regulatory bodies and the higher education institutions over the course of this project. It's very encouraging. And thank you very much. And thank you for undertaking this study. I think it is an area that the various professions will be very interested in and will learn a lot from and have a lot to be grateful for, for the work you've done. So thank you, Professor Lynch. Thank you very much, Aljan. Thank you for your time. Stay in for your support. Thank you. Thank you very much.