• Edel Marie Quinn, Peter Cantillon, Henry Paul Redmond, and Deirdre Bennett.
• Department of Surgery, Cork University Hospital, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland. Electronic address: edelquinn@rcsi.ie.
• J Surg Educ. 2014 Jul 1;71(4):606-12.

BackgroundJournal club has become a signature pedagogy in postgraduate medical education. In this article, social learning theory, through the lens of "communities of practice" (CoP), is applied to elucidate the process of learning in journal club.Materials And MethodsThe study is a case study of a surgical journal club. Video recordings of 2 journal club sessions were followed by semistructured audio-recorded interviews with a sample of journal club participants. Thematic content analysis was performed, mapping data to themes arising based on the key tenets of CoP.ResultsFeatures of the 4 tenets of CoP learning (community, meaning, identity, and practice) were identified in both the video recordings of journal club and the participant interviews. A shared enterprise and common sense of purpose (community) was seen throughout the video recordings, but feelings of belonging to the community were much stronger for senior members (consultants/attending staff and senior trainees) compared with junior members (junior trainees and students). Experiences and perspectives were more commonly exchanged between senior trainees and consultants, with junior trainees not partaking in discussions, an example of newcomers beginning at the periphery. The main impediment to learning was found with low senior member attendance at journal club, thus limiting access to narratives of senior experience of practice and feedback.ConclusionsIn attempting to improve journal club design for learning, ensuring the participation of senior community members and thus access to narratives of experience along with active engagement of junior members to allow them develop their own meaning should be incorporated into the journal club design.Copyright © 2014 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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