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ContextTransformative learning (TL) has been described as learning that challenges established perspectives, leading to new ways of being in the world. As a learning theory it has resonated with educators globally, including those in the health professions. Described as a complex metatheory, TL has evolved over time, eliciting divergent interpretations of the construct. This scoping review provides a comprehensive synthesis of how TL is currently represented in the health professions education literature, including how it influences curricular activities, to inform its future application in the field.MethodsArksey and O'Malley's six-step framework was adopted to review the period from 2006 to May 2018. A total of 10 bibliographic databases were searched, generating 1532 potential studies. After several rounds of review, first of abstracts and then of full texts, 99 studies were mapped by two independent reviewers onto the internally developed data extraction sheet. Descriptive information about included studies was aggregated. Discursive data were subjected to content analysis.ResultsA mix of conceptual and empirical research papers, which used a range of qualitative methodologies, were included. Studies from the USA, the UK and Australia were most prevalent. Insights relating to how opportunities for TL were created, how it manifests and influences behaviour, as well as how it is experienced, demonstrated much congruency. Conceptions of TL were seen to be clustered around the work of key theorists.ConclusionsThe training of health professionals often takes place in unfamiliar settings where students are encouraged to be active participants in providing care. This increases the opportunity for exposure to learning experiences that are potentially transformative, allowing for a pedagogy of uncertainty that acknowledges the complexity of the world we live in and questions what we believe we know about it. TL provides educators in the health professions with a theoretical lens through which they can view such student learning.

Global health education (GHE) continues to be a growing initiative in many medical schools across the world. This focus is no longer limited to participants from high-income countries and has expanded to institutions and students from low- and middle-income settings. With this shift has come a need to develop meaningful curricula through engagement between educators and learners who represent the sending institutions and the diverse settings in which GHE takes place. The Bellagio Global Health Education Initiative (BGHEI) was founded to create a space for such debate and discussion and to generate guidelines towards a universal curriculum for global health. In this article, we describe the development and process of our work and outline six overarching principles that ought to be considered when adopting an inclusive approach to GHE curriculum development.

OBJECTIVE: The estimated prevalence of learning disabilities (LDs) is nearly 8% of all children. Fewer than 5% of all children are diagnosed in public schools, jeopardizing remediation. We aimed to identify barriers affecting front-line childfacing professionals in detecting LDs in school-aged children. METHODS: We conducted a qualitative study with individual interviews of 40 professionals from different areas of the United States identified through theoretical sampling (20 educators, 10 pediatricians, and 10 child mental health clinicians). Clinicians represented academic and community settings, and educators represented public, private, and charter schools. Twenty had expertise in assessing LDs; 20 were generalists without specific training. We also endeavored to maximize representation across age, gender, race and ethnicity, and location. We analyzed transcripts utilizing grounded theory and identified themes reflecting barriers to detection. RESULTS: Themes and sub-themes included: 1) areas requiring improved professional education (misconceptions that may hinder detection, confounding factors that may mask LDs, and need for increasing engagement of parents or guardians in identifying LDs) and 2) systemic barriers (time constraints that limited professionals' ability to advocate for children and to delve into their emotional experiences, inconsistent guidelines across institutions and inconsistent perceptions of professional responsibility for detection, and confusion surrounding screening tools and lack of screening by some professionals in the absence of overt problems). CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians and other child-facing professionals may benefit from augmented training in screening and identification and enhanced evidence-based and institutional guidance. These efforts could increase efficiency and perceived responsibility for recognition and improve earlier detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]