A Teaching Philosophy: The CORE Framework and Beyond

This statement articulates my core beliefs about teaching and learning in professional healthcare education, centered on the "Clinical Columbo" metaphor for developing systematic clinical reasoning. It reflects my commitment to teaching as "an act of respect" and demonstrates how I apply Scientific Teaching principles through my CORE Framework (Concise, Organized, Relevant, Engaging). While this statement focuses on my work in DPT education, the philosophy extends to my work teaching sailing & seamanship, coaching, or basic sciences. 

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Consider this exchange with a student working through a case in Applied Clinical Decision Making. A 58-year-old man presents with shoulder pain. The student asks surface questions and announces: "Rotator cuff tendinopathy. I would start with strengthening."

"OK," I say. "You've identified a suspect. What about the others?"

They pause. "Others?"

"Night pain. No mechanism of injury. Age over fifty. What else belongs on your suspect list? What other evidence should we gather?" Cue the jazz music and stark lighting; we are now film-noir detectives hot on the trail.

I watch their thinking shift. They're with me now, trench coat and all. They're no longer searching for the answer. They're building a case, gathering evidence, systematically eliminating possibilities. By the session's end, they've identified adhesive capsulitis as the primary suspect, with referred cervical pain and rotator cuff pathology as secondary considerations. As so often happens, it's a gang of punks, not just one perp. More importantly, they've learned that clinical reasoning isn't about speed. It's about thinking things through, about being thorough investigators rather than quick responders.

While this "Clinical Columbo" activity probably emerged from my watching too many crime dramas, it also came from watching students and new physical therapists jump to conclusions before building adequate differential diagnoses. As clinical Columbos, my students become investigators in a real mystery. Differential diagnoses become suspects. Clinical tests become interrogations. Treatment responses become evidence. And I become the senior detective who asks the questions that reopen cases everyone else considers closed.

This metaphor works because story engages different neural pathways than abstract instruction. When I say "build a differential diagnosis using the hypothetico-deductive model," students hear a cognitive task. When I say "you're a detective building a suspect list," they enter a narrative. Narrative activates emotional engagement, episodic memory, and pattern recognition in ways that abstract frameworks don't. Students remember stories. They forget procedures.

The detective framework also disrupts the premature closure that novices habitually fall into. Novices see patterns quickly because they're searching for familiar templates. A 58-year-old with shoulder pain matches the rotator cuff template, so they stop investigating. But detectives don't stop at the first plausible suspect. By casting students as detectives, I interrupt their automatic pattern-matching and make them accountable to investigative processes. The metaphor creates cognitive friction that slows fast thinking just enough to allow systematic reasoning to emerge.

Teaching as an Act of Respect

Teaching is fundamentally an act of respect. Students invest irreplaceable time, finite energy, significant money, and profound trust. They deserve returns on those investments. The people they will treat, the organizations employing them, and the profession depend on the quality of my teaching. The butterfly effect of these deep interconnections drives every instructional decision I make. 

This conviction led me to develop the CORE Framework: Concise, Organized, Relevant, Engaging. The framework operationalizes principles from Scientific Teaching (Handelsman, Miller, & Pfund), particularly backward design, active learning, and continuous formative assessment. Every instructional choice passes through four gates. Is this content streamlined without losing meaning? Does the structure guide learners logically? Does this connect to actual clinical practice? Does this sustain curiosity and challenge appropriately? When any answer is "no," I redesign.

Creating Psychological Safety

PT education involves public performance of developing skills. Students demonstrate patient handling while classmates observe. They verbalize clinical reasoning while instructors evaluate. This visibility makes psychological safety essential.

I create safety through deliberate practices. I share my own failures openly: my dyslexia and reading struggles, challenging clinical moments that become learning experiences, my lifelong weight struggles before losing 200 pounds. These aren't confessions. They're invitations showing that imperfection is the starting point, not a disqualifier.

My feedback follows what researchers call a "mentor mindset": high standards paired with high support. The message is never "this is wrong" but rather "here's the gap between where you are and where you need to be, and here's how we close it together."

Students recognize this approach. One wrote: "He is knowledgeable but will make you think and work for the answer (in a good way)." Another noted: "He really made us understand the why, which helped us understand the basis behind the concepts." Dr. Karen Manella, Director of our DPT Program, observed this reflects "balance of compassion and accountability" that fosters "student growth and program success."

Ongoing Growth

I'm exploring how artificial intelligence might personalize clinical reasoning instruction without losing the human elements that make mentorship irreplaceable. I want to reach students whose learning needs differ most from my own, which means continuing to examine my assumptions about how understanding develops.

The return I work for appears in specific moments: the student who texts from her first clinical rotation that she's "channeling her inner Columbo" with every patient. The feedback "taught us how to think, not just what to know" is a benchmark of success.

Physical therapy sits at a remarkable intersection. Students become caring, compassionate scientists who must simultaneously evaluate, diagnose, treat, teach, and motivate. When students leave prepared to employ science in the service of compassion, to investigate thoroughly while touching lives, teaching has succeeded. That transformation, from learner to healer, is what makes this work meaningful.