Professional socialization: Beginnings, endings, and endings that are beginnings

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The autumn has arrived, and with it the university moves from a slow-paced and empty space, to a bustling campus full of new students finding their way and colleagues starting again on the yearly travel through the academic year. Much to the horror of my partner- who is a summer and warm weather person- I love the autumn, with the crunchy leaves, mushrooms popping up, and fresh academic starts.

I currently have several projects running that on the surface look quite distant from one another, but the past few weeks have been a bonanza of worlds colliding, with overlaps and potential for collaboration turning up in the most unexpected places. I love the creativity that these unexpected overlaps bring.

The morning had been a morning discussing the role of professional socialization in education at our VetMed school in Utrecht; how does one embark on “the individual’s journey in becoming a member of a particular profession, a unique social group, and learning to be part of the culture of that group with all its privileges, requirements and responsibilities” (from a frequently cited definition of professional socialization by Joy Higgs (1)) as a veterinary student- and how do we have students socialized to a profession while at the same time giving them the education needed to change and modernize professional standards?

I switched gears to go to the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (EurSafe) conference in Ede, rather expecting to leave my education “hat” behind in Utrecht. I found myself in a talk by Christian Dürnberger from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna examined socialization of VetMed students *before* entering vet school: what kind of experience do that have with animals? Have they ever done any work in a veterinary practice before entering vet school? In their study, which is also reported in detail in the extended abstract book (2) – most students unsurprisingly reported early exposure to dogs and/or cats (and assorted other animals), and 75% reported not having worked in a veterinary setting before starting VetMed education.

This is useful to know – and I’d be very curious to see this both in our own students in Utrecht and in a European study – but the discussion afterward was what stayed with me the most. One of the points made: what do we expect from our students before starting veterinary medicine? While having practical experience and “knowing what you are getting into” certainly could be useful, why do we expect this from VetMed students and not from, say, philosophers? Is veterinary practice is so different from what students imagine, that we need to prepare them for the reality to avoid disappointment? What does this mean about veterinary practice- is it so harsh that we need to prepare students before they even start, in order to help them cope? Do we need to start at the beginning- before students arrive- to prepare for the end of studies? I wonder if we don’t need to start from the end, to make practice a bit more  accommodating to young veterinarians.

In my own professional socialization, this week I completed an 18-month program for Educational Leadership at Utrecht University together with 14 colleagues; it has been an intensive time with collaborations and friendships formed, and has absolutely been an intensive professional socialization period. What kind of educator do I want to be? Where am I a part of the system of higher education, and where do I want to change the system? Being a student again for a while – including all of the social aspects – has shifted the way I look at my work, my teaching, and my values. I can’t help but think, if this has changed so much for me with my greying hair and a few decades of work experience, how much must this do for our students?

Fortunately the end of the program is not the end but the beginning of our plans; we have spent the last months working on plans for disseminating what we’ve learned, plans for new projects, and plans for study trips. I look forward to where this end and beginning are taking us!

1. Higgs, Joy. “Professional Socialisation.,” Educating Health Professionals : Becoming a University Teacher. Practice, Education, Work and Society. Rotterdam: Brill (2013) DOI: 10.1007/978-94-6209-353-9_8

2. Dürnberger C, Fliri S, Springer S. “Before studying veterinary medicine. A discussion of biographical
aspects of veterinary students.,” Brill (2024) doi: 10.1163/9789004715509_061

Vet Ed and The Big Questions

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Photo of a brown and white dairy cow with long horns arching above its head

People who know me in real life also know that I am active in educational communities in Community Engaged Learning (CEL). But like all educational practices, CEL is a means to an end, not a goal on its own. Why do I think CEL can add to VetEd? CEL is an educational approach that can inspire engagement with relevant societal issues in moving toward sustainable and healthy futures, and provides learning ground for veterinary medicine students to work together constructively with stakeholders who may have different goals or views than their own.

Increasingly, society looks to veterinarians to use their expertise to guide discussions on key societal and civic issues. This is seen at the national level within the Netherlands as expressed in a report commissioned by the Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality) on the current and future role of veterinarians in the Netherlands (1), as well as in initiatives like Caring Vets and Vet Sustain which emphasize the role of veterinarians in sustainable transitions. Taking the cow by the horns, so to speak (see photo- yes, dairy cattle also have horns, these are nearly always removed in a painful procedure in calves because they don’t fit in current dairy cattle farming systems- which is one of those difficult conversations vets should have).

Veterinarians have a special place in society. The general public view veterinarians as a trusted source of scientific information (3), who are knowledgeable about and should be able to communicate and discuss complex issues like climate change and its effects on animals and humans. As professionals, veterinarians have both access to scientific information and insights, and also direct communication with stakeholders (ie farmers, commercial parties, lay public) (4). Despite this clear role that veterinarians can play, and feel called toward (5), veterinarians are not yet as well represented in societal discussions surrounding for instance sustainability issues as they could be, which is a missed opportunity for both veterinarians and society.

So how can we as VetEd professionals contribute to preparing veterinarians to take up this role? There is a need to further build on communication, leadership and community building skills in the veterinary medicine curricula to equip future veterinarians to take on leadership roles in complex questions like One Health, One Welfare, and sustainability transitions (6,7). Here is where viewing curricula through a CEL-lens can help. A key concept in CEL is reciprocity (see my earlier post on the concept of reciprocity); understanding where another person is approaching an issue from can help enormously in engaging in discussion about The Big Questions and wicked problems without easy solutions.

Contact with lay public is an essential part of CEL and a natural component of VetEd; clinical work almost by definition means contact with owners, farmers, and other lay public. In further development of Vet Ed programs, we should build more on that contact and give our vets tools to have these complex discussions in a constructive and empathetic manner by teaching reciprocity and having students reflect upon the role of veterinary professionals in these interactions. CEL experience and practice can help us further this reciprocity and reflection in Vet Ed.

1.            Ministerie van Landbouw N en V. Onderzoek naar positie en rol dierenarts en kwaliteitsborging diergeneeskundige beroepsuitoefening – Rapport – Rijksoverheid.nl. (2022) https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2022/12/23/bijlage-1-onderzoek-naar-positie-en-rol-dierenarts-en-kwaliteitsborging-diergeneeskundige-beroepsuitoefening-rapport-berenschot [Accessed April 29, 2024]

2.            Nelke A, Persson K, Selter F, Weber T. “54. Veterinarians as key intermediaries in sustainability discourse(s).,” Transforming food systems: ethics, innovation and responsibility. Wageningen Academic Publishers (2022). p. 350–355 doi: 10.3920/978-90-8686-939-8_54

3.            Kedrowicz AA, Royal KD. A Comparison of Public Perceptions of Physicians and Veterinarians in the United States. Vet Sci (2020) 7:50. doi: 10.3390/vetsci7020050

4.            Kiran D, Sander WE, Duncan C. Empowering Veterinarians to Be Planetary Health Stewards Through Policy and Practice. Front Vet Sci (2022) 9:775411. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.775411

5.            Pollard AE, Rowlison DL, Kohnen A, McGuffin K, Geldert C, Kramer C, MacDonald L, Kastendieck EG, Sekhon SS, Carpenter MJ, et al. Preparing Veterinarians to Address the Health Impacts of Climate Change: Student Perceptions, Knowledge Gaps, and Opportunities. J Vet Med Educ (2021) 48:343–350. doi: 10.3138/jvme-2019-0080

6.            Chaddock M. Academic Veterinary Medicine and One Health Education: It Is more than Clinical Applications. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education (2012) 39:241–246. doi: 10.3138/jvme.0612-062

7.            Mattson K, Cima G. Veterinarians could lead sustainability efforts | American Veterinary Medical Association. (2020) https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2020-11-01/veterinarians-could-lead-sustainability-efforts [Accessed April 19, 2024]

Where community engaged learning and diversity meet

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Photo of a park bench viewed from behind; the park bench overlooks trees with in the distance a river

There are many reasons to champion the use of Community Engaged Learning in education. For me, it is increasing the proficiency of our students to have conversations on complex topics with people who may have entirely different views than themselves. But another strong and frequently encountered argument for engaging students in the non-university community they are surrounded by, is to get students “out of their bubble”, experiencing that not everyone is university educated and/or from a high socio-economic status background. And for many (I daresay in Veterinary Medicine, for most students) this is a very good thing.

However, when the rationale for CEL is “exposure of students to other groups”, the assumption is that the student is not part of that societal group; they are “the others”. This is obviously an injustice to students who come from a background similar to societal partners involved, or the neighborhood, or the socio-economic background that is engaged in CEL work.

This friction has been reported, among others in a powerful ethnographic study Arianna Taboada on her experience as a Latina student in a Masters program in Public Health in a predominantly white school of public health. She described her experience in a CEL course (1) and the disconnect she felt with her experience and the aims of partnership and mutual exchange, pointing specifically to the lack of discussion of the role of power and race in public health as an obstacle to development of self-awareness and cultural competency. In another report, students from low SES backgrounds were reported to emphasize systemic understanding of food insecurity and poverty in reflections on CEL work in food kitchens, while students form medium- and high SES backgrounds emphasized an individualist understanding- expressing for instance satisfaction in being able to help an individual in the food kitchen (2).

Discussion of race and social justice issues is an important part of approaching the intersection between CEL and DEI, though discussion requires careful preparation from educators, as these discussions can be experienced very differently by students from majority and minority backgrounds. Among other issues, students who have more privilege may draw sharp boundaries between themselves and the communities or social groups involved in CEL (“othering”), where discussions are presumed to be about “the others” who are not students, without taking lived experiences of their classmates with racism or social injustice into account (3).

These are such big issues; I’ve tried to check my own privilege in this post as a white cis het woman, but also humbly acknowledge that me writing about this issue is very different from someone with lived experiences. I am having a hard time thinking about what kind of image to include with this post that does justice to the topic. I’ve ended up with this bench looking out into the distance to emphasize that as instructors, we have a responsibility to take time and contemplate the way CEL touches on EDI, and how this affects our students, and take action to make CEL inclusive for all students.

1.            Taboada A. Privilege, Power, and Public Health Programs: A Student Perspective on Deconstructing Institutional Racism in Community Service Learning. J Public Health Manag Pract (2011) 17:376–380. doi: 10.1097/PHH.0b013e3182140c63

2.            Clever M, Miller KS. “I Understand What They’re Going through”: How Socioeconomic Background Shapes the Student Service-learning Experience. Teach Sociol (2019) 47:204–218. doi: 10.1177/0092055X19832646

3.            Seider S, Huguley JP, Novick S. College Students, Diversity, and Community Service Learning. Teach Coll Rec (2013) 115:030301.

Reciprocity or the art of connecting

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Photograph of two empty chairs on a hill facing two trees

How can veterinary students learn to approach stakeholders, patient owners, lay public and other non-vets in ways that acknowledge the expertise of all involved? What can a vet learn from the owner, the farmer, the hoofsmith, the animal welfare organization activist? And how can this be approached in a way that doesn’t discount the science-based knowledge a vet brings to the table? These hard questions are part of veterinary professionalization.

Community engaged learning (CEL) can provide useful insights in this area. A key concept in CEL is reciprocity, in which everyone involved in the process brings knowledge and experiences to the table and learns from one another: students, societal partners and teachers. This can lead to benefits for all parties involved by increasing influence in project outcomes, and co-creation of new ideas or projects (1,2); discussing with veterinarians about how to approach and improve veterinary care can also empower owners, farmers and stakeholders in future discussions with veterinary professionals.

Thinking about reciprocity in the setting of a health care professional like a veterinarian can be challenging. After all, the veterinarian brings knowledge to the conversation: how to heal an animal that has been brought to their practice with a fracture. How to plan and execute a sound vaccination strategy for a poultry farm. How to work toward healthy genetics in companion animal breeds. There is also a cross-link with Equality, Diversity and Inclusion that I’ll return to in a later post, where women or those with ethnically diverse backgrounds can have difficulty being taken seriously in their knowledge.

When veterinary student is aware of the strengths and limits of their own knowledge, there is a lot to be learned from societal partners; one profound example is looking into where and why veterinary care is lacking. In a poignant example, Tan and colleagues reported going into areas with indigenous populations with veterinary students from a conscious attitude of respect, learning from horse care practices and being open to how the lack of trust in (veterinary) medical care came to be in a group in Canada (3).

There are lessons to be learned about approaching groups that may lack veterinary care through this example with its own charged history. It is not about not simply offering care or teaching about basic animal care, but also listening to why it is not available (or used) in the first place. Try to understand the root of the problem by including the knowledge of all involved; in short, reciprocal learning.

Experience with each of these kinds of reciprocity is beneficial to societal partners by giving opportunities to interact with and influence future veterinary care, and for future veterinarians in developing the social context and skills needed to constructively enter into societal discourse at personal, local or even international levels (4). Sometimes learning is about sitting next to someone and looking forward together.

1.            Hammersley L. Language Matters: Reciprocity and Its Multiple Meanings. In: Sachs J,  Clark L, editors. Singapore: Springer Singapore (2017). p. 115–131 doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-0999-0_8

2.            Dostilio L, Brackmann S, Edwards K, Harrison B, Kliewer BW, Clayton PH. Reciprocity: Saying What We Mean and Meaning What We Say. Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning (2012) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Reciprocity%3A-Saying-What-We-Mean-and-Meaning-What-Dostilio-Brackmann/36d1f09e8d996c75c618677f126dc5d625168f29 [Accessed July 7, 2024]

3.            Tan J-Y, Poitras Pratt Y, Danyluk P. “First, do no harm”: systematic program evaluation of an equine veterinary service-learning initiative with Indigenous communities in Canada. BMC Med Educ (2024) 24:287. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05234-3

4.            Stephens T ed. One Welfare in Practice: The Role of the Veterinarian. Boca Raton: CRC Press. (2021). 414 p. doi: 10.1201/9781003218333

Role models, EDI and lighthouses

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I have a long-standing interest in the importance of gender and diversity in the workplace, universities specifically. I work toward changes in policy and visibility: in the past I’ve worked on governance with the University Council (some 15 years ago), and when people ask me to provide suggestions for keynotes, I deliberately send lists with only women. Recently, though, for all kinds of reasons I’ve been paying more attention to other kinds of diversity.

Veterinary medicine is notoriously non-diverse; in the USA numbers as high as 94% white, non-hispanic veterinarians in the workforce have been reported (1). I don’t know the numbers in Europe (am happy to hear from those who have numbers), but from looking around me I expect about the same. This is obviously problematic for all kinds of reasons, including mental well-being of veterinarians (2) and development of cultural humility (3), which are both essential to future work in the veterinary field.

This lack of diversity so obviously needs to change, but it is overwhelming to think about where to start. How to work toward inclusivity, and get a critical mass of diverse students to make it easier for everyone to feel welcome, at home, seen? At this week’s Netherlands Society for Medical Education conference in Egmond aan Zee, the session I attended on role models was both hopeful and frustrating.

Hopeful: research by Isabella Spaans indicating that (human) medical students don’t really identify a single role model, but compose a “mosaic” role model (4), forming an “ideal” role model meshed from characteristics from various people, and that this is very similar in students from migration backgrounds compared to non-migration backgrounds. To me this means that *all* of us can be role models, and we don’t need to be perfect role models on all aspects to be of value as a role model.

Frustrating: In a follow-up to Isabella Spaans’ study, she showed students from migration backgrounds indicated much less of a feeling that they resemble their role models than students from non-migration backgrounds. And this is hardly surprising; it is easier for anyone to identify with a person that shares common experiences, and without role models that share such fundamental experiences as growing up with a migration background, its not hard to see how identification with a role model is missing.

I’ve no answers here, except that we need to do better. But I’m also not sure how to have diverse role models as a lighthouse to other students and future veterinarians, while not asking too much from the role models themselves- being a lighthouse in the middle of town can be a lonely place.

How do we work toward more diversity in Veterinary Medicine? I’m convinced that Veterinary Education is the key, but I’m not sure yet how to turn that key. Much more thought and action needed.

Photo: view of Egmond aan Zee with lighthouse on the right, with housing and low buildings surrounding the lighthouse on three sides. On the left the sea and sky, both grayish.

—————

1.            Snyder CR, Frogner BK, Skillman SM. Facilitating Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Health Workforce. J Allied Health (2018) 47:58–65.

2.            Timmenga FSL, Jansen W, Turner PV, De Briyne N. Mental well-being and diversity, equity, and inclusiveness in the veterinary profession: Pathways to a more resilient profession. Front Vet Sci (2022) 9:888189. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.888189

3.            Alvarez EE, Gilles WK, Lygo-Baker S, Chun R. Teaching Cultural Humility and Implicit Bias to Veterinary Medical Students: A Review and Recommendation for Best Practices. J Vet Med Educ (2020) 47:2–7. doi: 10.3138/jvme.1117-173r1

4.            Spaans I, de Kleijn R, Seeleman C, Dilaver G. ‘A role model is like a mosaic’: reimagining URiM students’ role models in medical school. BMC Medical Education (2023) 23:396. doi: 10.1186/s12909-023-04394-y

Universities on Fire

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What will change for academic institutions as the climate crisis is increasingly not some far-off future, but happening now? And are we preparing our students for these uncomfortable conversations?

Academia in a changing climate
As academics we’ve grown accustomed to thinking about how this will affect the academic fields that we research and often advocate- animal welfare in my case, which will quite obviously be affected in many ways. But climate change will also affect our universities as institutions themselves, which is a perspective most of us don’t think about much- which is Universities on Fire (Alexander, B. (2023). Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.56021/9781421446493) is such an intriguing and alarming book.

How will we as institutions deal with climate refugees? Will we be welcoming to those who cannot stay in their own geographic areas due to heat, flooding, or drought? Or will we put up walls to keep our cocoon safe? What to do when the water rises and we have to abandon our current physical university buildings and move to higher ground, is also very relevant when one lives in a country largely below sea level. Will we take action regarding our institutional role in financial systems contributing to climate change, or will we keep our funding safe in banks that invest in fossil fuels and unsustainable food systems?

Community engagement in times of climate crisis
All of these are important, but what really struck a chord with me is: how will we as academics interact with the communities we are part of as institutions? Will we join forces with communities to share the burden of electric grid use, or will we demand use for our energy-consuming servers to continue (for instance) climate research? As a whole, the book left me with a lot to think about, but a bit unsure on how to move from “whoa, this is a lot” toward action. For me, community engagement is how I feel I can contribution to action.

I am an educator of veterinarians, a profession which is exceptionally well positioned to contribute to discussions on sustainability, effects of climate change on humans and other animals, and on public health and welfare; community engaged learning is one way that we can prepare our students for these difficult conversations. I hold a general belief that we are all in this together, so the separation of academia from “the rest of the world” is unhelpful and unnatural. Having our veterinary students feel more a part of societal problems- including climate change- is one of the reasons I’m working to implement community engaged learning in our education.

Dynamic human welfare concept….

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This is your periodic reminder that social media is a very narrow view of life, and that (in the northern hemisphere) it is spring and time to go outdoors.

What spawned this reminder: while I continue to do cool and very photogenic things (I work with animals after all), many in my surroundings know that this academic year has been a wild ride in my personal life. I’ve had to switch from 6th gear back to 3rd to make sure I’m doing the things I’m doing well, rather than trying to do everything but not finishing anything.

I try to be open about these challenges, especially to the younger generation of academics (or whatever career). When I was starting out I thought that the older academics (and ehm, I think I’ve reached that point) had it all figured out, how to run the work-life balance circus. The reality is, no, we don’t have it all figured out. There is no “figuring it all out”- it looks different for everyone, and changes during different phases of life and career. A Dynamic Animal Welfare Concept, if you will, but then applied to human animals.

So to all of you just-graduates trying to figure out whether or not to move for a job, or new parents trying to figure out when to sleep, or those caring for parents or other loved ones and balancing all of this with work (that you may- hopefully- also love and be passionate about): there will never be a perfect answer to the work-life balance question. You’ll have to figure out what works for you, and that may look very different to what works for others and change over time. And that is OK.

So take a minute. Breathe. Do what works for you to find your balance. For me, that’s outdoors with a camera, and sheep in spring are a bonus; enjoy this sheep gazing into your soul.

Why is Robert a “problem” in the Robert and Susan Problem?

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In the quiet around the holidays, I’m working my way through education books, including the revised Biggs, Tang and Kennedy (Teaching for Quality Learning at University), founders of Constructive Alignment in education. This is, in short, the idea that as educators we should start by determining learning goals, then design assignments and assessments that help students achieve these goals. That seems obvious, but most of us spent decades doing this the other way around: deciding what material to cover, then how to test, and then what students might learn. Clearly, Constructive Alignment is a better way to get students actually learning what you aspire them to learn.

While I’m a big fan of Constructive Alignment, the “Robert and Susan” problem used to illustrate much of the approach irritates me to no end. For those unfamiliar: the idea is that the hypothetical student Susan is a highly motivated learner with background and skills that lead her to “deep learning”, pretty much regardless of how the teaching takes place. Our hypothetical student Robert is “just there for the degree” and going through the motions, so only superficially learning the subject matter (“surface learning”). So far, I can picture this.

My irritation starts when the goal of the teacher is framed as “getting the Roberts to learn like Susans”. It’s taken me some time to figure out just why this grates me. My main issue is: this kind of framing doesn’t treat (our fictional) Robert as a whole person, with things going on in his life. Of *course* we should teach to engage all students, and work toward ways of giving all students opportunities to get into deep learning. BUT: I also strongly feel as a someone in higher education that humanity and humility is needed in approaching our students.

Our students have lives, just as we do. Sometimes just being there for the degree, is all they have to give. If a student can’t give enough to get the degree at that specific time in their life, so be it. Approach them as the adults that they are. No, no one should be awarded a degree without sufficiently learning what they need to learn. I am in no way advocating for “sympathy passing”. I teach veterinarians. No one wants an incompetent veterinarian to get a degree.

I *am* absolutely advocating recognition that the Roberts of the world who are there “just” for the degree might be narrowly passing your part of the curriculum, but have A LOT to contribute. The Roberts often have a world of experience outside of class that the Susans would be well served being introduced to. Real-world problems that mean learning about work-life balance, for one. Or persevering down a path as a means to an end, even if you may not enjoy or excel every step of the way.

If we don’t approach our students as adults with lives and experiences, how can we expect them to study as adults?