A little reflection never hurt anybody

by Rob Houtepen, Co-ordinator of the ethics and law program in the Maastricht medical school

‘Practice what you preach’ is not the worst of mottos. And since HES preaches critical reflection to lots of Maastricht students in lots of different programs, it would be somewhat disquieting if we never put such reflection to work on our own educational activities. Our contributions are of course always evaluated by students in the thorough quantitative manner that Maastricht has a reputation for. But every one who is responsible for important parts of the curriculum is by nature an extremely busy person, so it’s always very tempting to respond to commentary by making only minor alterations, if at all. Also, course coordinators expect each content provider to be responsible for their own contributions, so the content of the HES part of educational programs is to a surprising degree an individual matter. All this, whilst we preach to students that critical reflection should be an integral element of the shared academic practice.

This is why, for the second time, HES has designated an entire day for critical reflection on our own educational practice. We’re not going to talk numbers, but mission. A surprisingly difficult question, for example, is what our key goals are in the broad specter of ‘academic thinking’ activities that we offer. Or what the ‘global’ of the ‘Global Health master’ is supposed to mean. Or the ‘health’, for that matter. And then again how ‘academic thinking’ and ‘global health’ relate, really?

We will therefore assemble on December 6 for critical reflection on our shared mission in education, our operational goals and the means we employ to that effect. This will take place in the idyllic setting of the Jekerdal, the most green and beautiful part of Maastricht.

Goals of the day are:

- to reflect jointly on our specific mission in the broader educational programs of FHML

- to explore how contributions in one program might profit from contributions and experiences in other programs

- to explore what kind of key tools (goals; concepts; theories; texts) we need to develop to realize our ambitions

The program for the day is:

Morning session:

Global Health: what would make this a true and coherent HES program?

Diversity: from stereotypical focus points to all out (self)critical thinking and attitude

Afternoon session:

Academic thinking: key messages, problems and questions

Tools for academic thinking: developing our own introductory texts that do the job

All this because no professional practice can last without critical reflection. Truly.

A New Website for HES

by David Townend (Health, Ethics and Society: Health Law)

The Department of Health, Ethics and Society has a new website, and with it this new Blog.

http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/hes

Health, Ethics and Society is a relatively new interdisciplinary department in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences in Maastricht University. It brings together a number of former departments and the Institute of Ethics under one department. In practice that means two things:

first, we have colleagues in the one department who approach health in society questions from different, complimentary disciplines;

second, we bring those interdisciplinary approaches to our teaching and research.

We have colleagues who have their disciplinary roots in philosophy and ethics, in anthropology and gender studies, in medical history, in sociology and law. We work in an interdisciplinary way through developing courses and research together, and through the common life of the department - the colloquia and general discussions about news and developing issues.

You can see many of the funded research projects that we are either co-ordinating or participating in on our website; you can also see information about our courses and the degree programmes to which we contribute.

What will this blog contribute to health, ethics and society?

Through the blog, we want to develop some of our teaching and research ideas. We will comment on different developments in our field, perhaps from one point of view, perhaps reflecting discussions in the department. The authorship of the post will be clear at the top of each post. We will also use it to publicise new events (seminars, Ph.D. promotions, etc.). You can follow these using the RSS feed.

We welcome your comments, within the usual rules that we reserve the right to remove content that is obscene, illegal, and the like. And we encourage academic challenge to our views.

We look forward to hearing from you, and we hope you will look forward to hearing from us.