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BOOK REVIEW

Teaching Physiology in the Developing World: Models for Quality Learning. Siddiqui A, Ahmad HR, Talati J, Herzig JW, and Carroll RG (editors). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Dept. of Physiology
Rush Medical College
Chicago, IL 60612

E-mail: jmichael{at}rush.edu

This little book is a near-verbatim transcript of a workshop held in 1999 at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. Although it is clearly aimed at the participants in this workshop and, more generally, at physiology teachers in the developing world, its messages are relevant and applicable to all institutions at which physiology is taught.

The contents of the book are quite varied. There are five lectures dealing with different approaches to helping physiology students learn with understanding. These are followed by five lectures presenting the issues and challenges of teaching physiology being confronted by countries in various regions in the developing world. Verbatim transcripts of three panel discussions come next, an interesting, if sometimes difficult-to-read attempt to present the dialogue that occurred between panelists; these dealt with the issues of how to teach for understanding, who will or should teach, and how to assess student learning. Four demonstrations are then described, two dealing with problem-based learning (PBL), one describing lecture hall demonstrations, and one a computer-based tutoring system. The book ends with summaries from working-group sessions and recommendations about the teaching of physiology.

One overarching theme pervades this book. Teaching and learning of physiology must aim for an understanding of physiology concepts, not merely the transmission and acquisition of knowledge. Expertise or competence is to be defined in terms of what one can do with the knowledge being acquired. Several overlapping approaches to achieving understanding are described, including interactive teaching, PBL, and the use of computers. Readers particularly interested in PBL will find the transcript of a PBL demonstration session conducted by Ann Sefton and Rob Carroll particularly interesting; it captures on the printed page, a reasonable approximation of the flavor of such sessions—a difficult task to accomplish.

Although it can be argued that there is nothing new in this volume, the messages to be found here bear repeating (and repeating and repeating). For too many students in too many courses around the world, physiology is still a subject to be memorized (and most likely forgotten soon after), not a subject to be understood. For many reasons, this is a situation that should be, and can be, changed. Perhaps the seemingly exotic source of this message will help convince the skeptics that the time has come for changes to be made in the way physiology is taught.

Received for publication July 23, 2003. Accepted for publication July 23, 2003.

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