Peer teaching in medical education: twelve reasons to move from theory to practice

To provide an estimation of how often peer teaching is applied in medical education, based on reports in the literature and to summarize reasons that support the use of this form of teaching. METHOD: We surveyed the 2006 medical education literature and categorised reports of peer teaching according to educational distance between students teaching and students taught, group size, and level of formality of the teaching. Subsequently, we analysed the rationales for applying peer teaching.

Most reports were published abstracts in either Medical Education's annual feature 'Really Good Stuff' or the AMEE's annual conference proceedings. We identified twelve distinct reasons to apply peer teaching, including 'alleviating faculty teaching burden', 'providing role models for junior students', 'enhancing intrinsic motivation' and 'preparing physicians for their future role as educators'.