Teaching Epistemology – Workshop as a Method for making Epistemology Relevant to Students

Introducing epistemology to healthcare students represents a challenge. Yet to be able to practice based on evidence, it is important that healthcare professionals gain an adequate level of research literacy as part of their health care education.
This article presents a new way to teach epistemology using a workshop design.
Three scientific perspectives on epistemology: humanistic, social science and natural science, are used as lenses to analyse situations from everyday healthcare practice represented by a video. Video is used to facilitate transfer of knowledge and to make it meaningful for students to engage in learning epistemology. Afterwards, three teachers facilitate the students’ group work to ensure they get to understand the difference between the scientific perspectives.

The workshop has received very good evaluations as students state that for the first time they understand how epistemology directly links to practice.