User blog: Duncan Ferguson

Teaching Physics vs. Teaching Vet Med - Aren't There Parallels?

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:40:50 GMT

by Duncan Ferguson.

I was once told by an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs that their school had looked at the grades of single pre-vet course series correlated best with grades of a student during the first 3 years of vet school. That course series was Physics. The instruction of students in conceptual and practical areas occurs in all areas of science. This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes Physics Professor Eric Mazur's recognition as he taught at Harvard that the traditional classroom lecture without interaction and without a focus on practical problem-solving, "had to go." Practical issues aside (this article addresses resistance from faculty in other scientific disciplines), what really is the difference between teaching students for longterm understanding of physics and teaching understanding of physiology, pharmacology, etc?

https://shar.es/1Jp7lK

"Powerful principles of reasoning, once learned, will never decay."

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:37:35 GMT

by Duncan Ferguson.

In his article in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Thinking for Dummies" Richard Nisbett suggests 5 strategies to encourage students to think critically. The quote from this article in the title says as strongly as one can imagine why we need to spend more time on helping future clinicians learn to reason.

Meta-Analysis on Critical Thinking

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:42:05 GMT

by Duncan Ferguson.

In this month's Review of Educational Research, there is a meta-analysis study by Huber and Kuncel entitled "Does College Teach Critical Thinking? A Meta-Analysis" (see attached). This and other related studies can be found at: http://rer.aera.net

This meta-analysis of 77 educational studies concludes that college itself tends to improve critical thinking as measured by general critical thinking skills tests like the Watson-Glaser or California Critical Thinking Test or the Cornell, Level Z test. However, they note that nursing has instituted as part of its accreditation requirements, training in critical thinking, and they chose to evaluate these studies separately, noting that systematic program-long efforts such as have been taken in nursing training has led to improvements in general critical thinking, but more importantly in discipline-specific critical thinking. Why shouldn't we seek the same for veterinary medicine?