Lucy Frank Squire’s Legacy of Collaborative Learning in Radiology Education

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. —George Bernard Shaw

There are numerous different ways medical students can relate to one another in their coursework. One is antagonism, in which learners see themselves as pitted against each other in a competition for grades and every learner’s success means another learner’s failure. Another is isolation, where learners feel alone in their studies and do not interact either positively or negatively with one another to any substantial degree. By contrast, competition can be a positive mode of interaction, if friendly rivalry spurs learners to work harder and learn more than they otherwise would.

Perhaps the best form of learner interaction is collaboration, where learners actually work together to help each other thrive in their education. Collaboration is derived from two Latin roots, com- and -laborare , meaning to work together. The equivalent Greek term is synergism. In professional educational circles, the collaborative approach means having learners work together as members of groups, rather than individually ( ).

One of the pioneers of collaborative learning in medicine was radiologist Lucy Frank Squire, who was also one of the leading radiology educators of her generation. Dr Squire repeatedly stressed the importance of collaborative learning throughout her career, and did her best to incorporate collaborative approaches into her teaching. Her commitment to this pedagogic approach actually intensified over the course of her long teaching career. In a 1969 article, “Perception related to learning radiology in medical school,” she wrote “There is no doubt that the learners derive the most effective kind of help in learning from a small seminar group” ( ).

By 1990, she had developed the case for collaborative learning in much greater detail:

The current problems of medical education hinge largely on the fact that we as teachers underestimate the capacities of our learners. Solitary study from books is tiresome and requires enormous discipline, but group learning is exciting, stimulating, and efficient because no single learner will have covered exactly the same reading material or seen exactly the same assortment of patients clinically. Each has something to offer, feels involved, and participates ( ).

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