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Introduction: Health professions education (HPE) has adopted the conceptualization of validity as an argument. However, the theoretical and practical aspects of how validity arguments should be developed, used and evaluated in HPE have not been deeply explored. Articulating the argumentation theory undergirding validity and validation can help HPE better operationalise validity as an argument. To better understand this, the authors explored how HPE validity scholars conceptualise assessment validity arguments and argumentation, seeking to understand potential consequences of these views on validation practices. Methods: The authors used critical case sampling to identify HPE assessment validity experts in three ways: (1) participation in a prominent validity research group, (2) appearing in a bibliometric study of HPE validity publications and (3) authorship of recent HPE validity literature. Qualitative semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 16 experts in HPE assessment validity from four different countries. The authors used reflexive thematic analysis to develop themes relevant to their research question. Results: The authors developed three themes grounded in participants' responses: (1) In theory, HPE validity is a social and situated argument. (2) In practice, the absence of audience and evaluation stymies the social nature of HPE validity. (3) Lack of validity argumentation creates and maintains power differentials within HPE. Participants articulated that current HPE validation practices are rooted in post‐positivist epistemology when they should be situated (i.e. context‐dependent), audience‐centric and inclusive. Discussion: When discussing validity argumentation in theory, participants' descriptions reflect an interpretivist lens for evaluation that is misaligned with real‐world validity practices. This misalignment likely arises from HPE's adoption of "validity as an argument" as a slogan, without integrating theoretical and practical principles of argumentation theory. How do HPE experts conceptualize the argumentation aspect of validity? @Midwest_MedPeds @ab_martini @LaraVarpio @erikdriessen @DrDanSchumacher explore the gap between theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construct: The globalization of healthcare has been accentuated by the export of health professional curricula overseas. Yet intact translation of pedagogies and practices devised in one cultural setting may not be possible or necessarily appropriate for alternate environments. Purposeful examination of workplace learning is necessary to understand how the source or "home" program may need adapting in the distributed or "host" setting. Background: Strategies to optimize cross-border medical education partnerships have been largely focused on elements of campus-based learning. Determining how host clinical supervisors approach assessment in experiential settings within a different culture and uphold the standards of home programs is relevant given the influence of context on trainees' demonstrated competencies. In this mixed-methods study, we sought to explore assessor judgments of student workplace-based performance made by preceptors sharing a pharmacy curriculum in Canada and Qatar. Approach: Using modified Delphi consensus technique, we asked clinical supervisors in Canada (n = 18) and in Qatar (n = 14) to categorize trainee performance as described in 16 student vignettes. The proportion of ratings for three levels of expectation (exceeds, meets, or below) was calculated and within-country group consensus achieved if the level of agreement reached 80%. Between-country group comparisons were measured using a chi-square statistic. We then conducted follow-up semi-structured interviews to gain further perspectives and clarify assessor rationale. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Results: The threshold for between-country group differences in assessor impressions was met for only two of the 16 student vignettes. Compared to Canadian clinical supervisors, relatively more preceptors in Qatar judged one described student as meets rather than exceeds expectations and one as meets rather than falls below expectations. Analysis of follow-up interviews exploring how culture may inform variations in assessor judgments identified themes associated with the profession, organization, learner, and supervisor performance theories but not their particular geographic context. Clinical supervisors in both countries were largely aligned in expectations of student knowledge, skills, and behaviors demonstrated in patient care and multidisciplinary team interactions. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that variation in student assessment was more frequent among clinical supervisors within the same national context than any differences identified between the two countries. In these program settings, national sociocultural norms did not predict global assessor impressions or competency-specific judgments; instead, professional and organizational cultures were more likely to inform student characterizations of performance in workplace-based settings. Further study situated within the specific experiential learning contexts of cross-border health professional curricula is assuredly warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: While authorship plays a powerful role in the academy, research indicates many authors engage in questionable practices like honorary authorship. This suggests that authorship may be a contested space where individuals must exercise agency-a dynamic and emergent process, embedded in context-to negotiate potentially conflicting norms among published criteria, disciplines and informal practices. This study explores how authors narrate their own and others' agency in making authorship decisions., Method: We conducted a mixed-methods analysis of 24 first authors' accounts of authorship decisions on a recent multi-author paper. Authors included 14 females and 10 males in health professions education (HPE) from U.S. and Canadian institutions (10 assistant, 6 associate and 8 full professors). Analysis took place in three phases: (1) linguistic analysis of grammatical structures shown to be associated with agency (coding for main clause subjects and verb types); (2) narrative analysis to create a 'moral' and 'title' for each account; and (3) dialectic integration of (1) and (2)., Results: Descriptive statistics suggested that female participants used we subjects and material verbs (of doing) more than men and that full professors used relational verbs (of being and having) more than assistant and associate. Three broad types of agency were narrated: distributed (n = 15 participants), focusing on how resources and work were spread across team members; individual (n = 6), focusing on the first author's action; and collaborative (n = 3), focusing on group actions. These three types of agency contained four subtypes, e.g. supported, contested, task-based and negotiated., Discussion: This study highlights the complex and emergent nature of agency narrated by authors when making authorship decisions. Published criteria offer us starting point-the stated rules of the authorship game; this paper offers us a next step-the enacted and narrated approach to the game., (© 2021 Association for the Study of Medical Education and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.)

Context: Authorship has major implications for researchers' careers. Hence, journals require researchers to meet formal authorship criteria. However, researchers frequently admit to violating these criteria, which suggests that authorship is a complex issue. This study aims to unpack the complexities inherent in researchers' conceptualisations of questionable authorship practices and to identify factors that make researchers vulnerable to engaging in such practices., Methods: A total of 26 North American medical education researchers at a range of career stages were interviewed. Participants were asked to respond to two vignettes, of which one portrayed honorary authorship and the other described an author order scenario, and then to describe related authorship experiences. Data were analysed using thematic analysis., Results: Participants conceptualised questionable authorship practices in various ways and articulated several ethically grey areas. Personal and situational factors were identified, including hierarchy, resource dependence, institutional culture and gender; these contributed to participants' vulnerability to and involvement in questionable authorship practices. Participants described negative instances of questionable authorship practices as well as situations in which these practices were used for virtuous purposes. Participants rationalised engagement in questionable authorship practices by suggesting that, although technically violating authorship criteria, such practices could be reasonable when they seemed to benefit science., Conclusions: Authorship guidelines portray authorship decisions as being black and white, effectively sidestepping key dimensions that create ethical shades of grey. These findings show that researchers generally recognise these shades of grey and in some cases acknowledge having bent the rules themselves. Sometimes their flexibility is driven by benevolent aims aligned with their own values or prevailing norms such as inclusivity. At other times participation in these practices is framed not as a choice, but rather as a consequence of researchers' vulnerability to individual or system factors beyond their control. Taken together, these findings provide insights to help researchers and institutions move beyond recognition of the challenges of authorship and contribute to the development of informed, evidence-based solutions., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education.)

Background: Despite acknowledgement that the Canadian Medical Educational Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS) framework covers the relevant competencies of physicians, many educators and medical professionals struggle to translate the CanMEDS roles into comprehensive training programmes for specific specialties., Aim: To gain insight into the applicability of the CanMEDS framework to guide the design of educational programmes for specific specialties by exploring stakeholders' perceptions of specialty specific competencies and examining differences between those competencies and the CanMEDS framework., Methods: This case study is a sequel to a study among ObsGyn specialists. It explores the perspectives of patients, midwives, nurses, general practitioners, and hospital boards on gynaecological competencies and compares these with the CanMEDS framework., Results: Clinical expertise, reflective practice, collaboration, a holistic view, and involvement in practice management were perceived to be important competencies for gynaecological practice. Although all the competencies were covered by the CanMEDS framework, there were some mismatches between stakeholders' perceptions of the importance of some competencies and their position in the framework., Conclusion: The CanMEDS framework appears to offer relevant building blocks for specialty specific postgraduate training, which should be combined with the results of an exploration of specialty specific competencies to arrive at a postgraduate curriculum that is in alignment with professional practice.