title: Evaluatioin paradigms in medical education.
abstract: Medical education is regularly challenged with new and innovative ideas in the field of curricula, teaching learning processes and assessment. Evaluation of these approaches and techniques provide vital information regarding their subsequent use and application to enhance the quality of learning experiences for students. Therefore, it is essentially important to choose an evaluation approach/model that provide meaningful and valid information to concerned stakeholders. Here two major paradigm of evaluation i.e. scientific and naturalistic are discussed emphasizing on their use, strengths and limitations. It is concluded that no single paradigm is superior to other and it is finally left to the evaluator for making the ultimate choice depending on the purpose and questions that need to be answered through evaluation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Education, University of Western Australia, WA 6009, Perth, Australia. zsiddiqui@meddent.uwa.edu.au
authors.forename: Zarrin Seema
authors.initials: ZS
authors.lastname: Siddiqui
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003479:Curriculum; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014904:Western Australia