Conversational Learning in Health Professions Education: Learning Through Talk

Health professions educators have increasingly focused on communication as a key skill to be mastered, which has had implications for curriculum development. However, communication in modern team-based healthcare also has explicit and intrinsic learning potential. Communication – or “talk” – can be viewed as the verbal content of speech and its associated “paralanguage” along with their social implications. Viewed in this light, talk is not only a skill that enables patient care but also represents a social medium of learning. This chapter explores the role of talk in the main scholarly perspectives of learning and examines conversational learning in both clinical workplaces and in explicit learning conversations in a variety of settings. Finally, the authors explore how conversational tensions influence learning and how psychological safety promotes productive conversational activities such as speaking up.