An Innovative Technique in Anatomy Pedagogy: The Flexagon as a Model of Gastrulation in Embryology

Research confirms anatomy is considered the corner stone subject within the medical curriculum and in clinical procedures ensuring safe medical practice by surgeons, doctors and a diverse range of medical specialists. Anatomists agree that understanding embryology is essential for gaining a comprehensive understanding of anatomy providing the necessary, essential, context to ensure accurate diagnosis and treatment of patients. These two widely agreed opinions seem to be at odds with the reduced time and resources devoted to anatomy and embryology within medical education in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The objective of this short paper is to promote learning activities that will inspire anatomy educators to delve deeper into medical embryology and help make important concepts such as invagination more understandable through kinaesthetic experience. Construction of an innovative technique for teaching anatomy generally and gastrulation specifically is proposed. Our proposed learning activity points to the need for studies looking at how learners respond to acquiring knowledge this way. Whether learners perform better upon assessment because of this activity could be examined through a pre/post-test study. Pedagogical strategies that engage the student while requiring active participation on their part has been demonstrated to be an effective learning tool when teaching anatomy. Embryonic morphogenesis involves the process of gastrulation occurring at the third week of human development. A 3-Dimensionality of gastrulation involves the transformation of a one-dimensional blastula (a single plane of epithelial cells) into a multidimensional, multi-planar structure referred to as the gastrula. Human embryos are triploblastic organisms displaying multidimensional embryonic cell planes identified as ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. A lessor known and under-appreciated role of gastrulation is the establishment of a tensegrity based architecture informing emerging organ formation and a multidimensional, biomolecular chiral based body-plan predicated upon a north-south (cranial/caudal) axis with dorsal/ventral and selective right and left symmetry. This proposed innovative teaching technique includes the architectural first principles of tensegrity during gastrulation making these difficult concepts easier to comprehend. From a pedagogical point of view gastrulation has proven to be a most difficult concept for anatomists to teach and for students to grasp. Research demonstrates the importance concerning knowledge of medical embryology for the anatomist and medical student alike. To help solve this problem this short paper provides a novel, yet fun approach, to teaching complicated, vital, underpinning aspects of embryogenesis essential for undergraduate medical students.