The Devil is in the (Mis) Alignment: Developing Curriculum for Clinical and Translational Science Professionals - Abstract
This paper explores various challenges associated with designing an effective transdisciplinary curriculum and proposes an approach grounded in the concept of constructive alignment and transformational leadership for developing curriculum for clinical and translational professionals. The proposed approach is based on the premise that alignment amongst program outcomes, learning objectives, content, activities, and graded assignments – which has been shown to be of great importance to the success of a unidisciplinary curriculum – is even more important in a transdisciplinary curriculum. Curriculum design efforts might significantly benefit from a different leadership model, whereby the transactional model of individual experts governed by a single leader is replaced by a team model guided by transformational leadership outcomes, in which the vision, mission, objectives, and ultimately accountability are all shared. Perhaps through this type of transformation, individuals engaged in the process feel responsible for not only representing (and for being accountable for) their own domains of expertise, but for elevating the overall status of the entire program of which they are part, through the improvement of the learning experience created for students.