Research on teaching and learning medicine.

Teaching medicine is a profession and a pleasure, a vocation and an avocation. It is also, as current research convincingly shows, a form of behavior that can be studied, measured, and modified under controlled conditions. 1-3 General educational research has an active and growing national organization, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), which produces informative reviews of current work through the Review of Educational Research , has developed an Encyclopedia of Educational Research , and, in the Handbook of Research on Teaching , has created what is "likely to be voted the most influential educational book of the half century." 4 Research in medical education is a relatively new field of endeavor. Although the Association of American Medical Colleges has supported such systematic study for more than a decade, educational research is formally represented in the organizational pattern of only seven medical schools; the oldest of these programs was established in 1959. Other