Friends: high-quality
#MedEd research very seldom boils down to "we tweaked our course/curriculum, now we want to see if that tweaking "worked" using a pre/post survey design."
Answers to the question "did it work" usually don't generalize (or transfer) to very much at all. The more important questions tend to be: how did it work, for whom, and under what circumstances? And a solid theoretical framework will almost always improve the quality and usefulness of virtually any education research/scholarship.
I'm reviewing education grants on this beautiful Mother's Day, and it seems that Cook et al. (2008)'s conclusion may still apply lo this 15 years later... "Clarification studies are uncommon in... medical education. Studies with this purpose (i.e. studies asking: How and why does it work?) are needed to deepen our understanding and advance the art and science of medical education." ;-/
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…