Teaching styles in the faculty-resident relationship

As part of an effort to train family physicians to be more effective teachers in family medicine, a teaching styles workshop program was developed. The aim of the program is to help physician teachers to become more flexible in matching a teaching style to a particular teaching context. The program consists of three components: (1) a scheme for classifying teaching behaviors as belonging to one of the four basic styles identified, (2) videotaped models of each of the four basic styles, and (3) structured role playing by workshop participants in which the four styles are practiced and critiqued. The program, as used in two different sets of faculty development workshops, is described and recommendations for its use by others given.