Peeragogy – Our Dying Forte

Abstract

Medical education as a subject or discipline is relatively new in our set up. Medical teachers are responding to it in different ways. Many claim that it is all what we have been and are still practicing. For others it is something very new. The argument is not unjustified as most of our medical teachers are already having many good teaching practices. Medical education is actually the use of these in a more refined, formal and scientific form. It is also incorporating new techniques & strategies and using most of these acts and principles by all medical teachers instead of being limited in practice for few teachers only. The sole purpose is improving the learning process.

One of these practices in medical education is Peer Assisted Learning (PAL). It is creating close collaboration among medical students to teach and help each other in their studies. The formal concept of Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) was introduced first in 1970 by Goldschmidt who used PAL at McGill University for undergraduate classes. PAL may be defined in many ways but simplest one is a situation in which "people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers help each other to learn, and learn themselves by teaching.