It is suggested that the pragmatic constraints inherent in university timetables, curricula and contexts limit opportunities for health professional students to learn collaboratively.
However, the translation of new curricula to classroom contexts cannot be carried out by teachers unreflectively (Tan & Nashon, 2013), and this is where action research finds its relevance.
In this paper, Chinese curricula in the contexts of China and Singapore on primary level are compared and contrasted by both quantitative (Word Segmenter and Text Analyzer) and qualitative methods (in-depth thematic analysis).
Findings on context for curricula design and implementation should provide a clear justification for design of an HSR curricula at national and regional levels as well as a rationale for building capacity.
Professional development opportunities may not provide prescribed context for curricula but help teachers transfer knowledge into instructional practice (McCutchen et al. 2002).
This study has the potential to further explore these issues and provide novel information with regard to student competency in EBM skills, which may assist in the formulation and refinement of existing medical curricula within the EBM context.
This is likely to be due, at least in part, to prescribing often being taught as an isolated component of curricula, removed from the context of clinical care (McLellan et al. 2012).
We use the framework developed for this study to describe different aspects of curricula and the wider context of programmes and graduates' work settings to identify if and how studies addressed the intervention logic of the programmes.
Further research is needed in other curricula and in different contexts to generalize the results of our study.
The core competencies we describe provide a platform upon which context-specific curricula and training activities can be developed, launched, and evaluated.
