This article refers to an elementary school study, but I believe we in medical education should take note.
… Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a teacher’s students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value added from an out-of-sample pre-period). Spillovers are strongest for less-experienced teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about 20 percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning.
This finding fits my own world view. Teaching excellence benefits from a strong critical mass (as does research and clinical practice.) We need more medical schools to champion teaching as strongly as they champion research grants and clinical dollars.
