Medical education has seen major changes over the past decade. Integrated teaching, problem-based learning, community-based learning, core curricula with electives or options and more systematic curriculum planning have been advocated.
While the increasing emphasis on student autonomy in medical education has moved the centre of gravity away from the teacher and closer to the student, the teacher continues to have a key role in student learning. A good teacher can be defined as a teacher who helps the student to learn. He or she contributes to this in a number of ways. These are described in the guide.
Each of the six roles described (see Figure 1) can be subdivided into two roles, making a total of twelve roles. Roles to the right in the figure require more content expertise or knowledge, and roles to the left more educational expertise.