Table 1.

Five intellectual traditions serve as sources of learning theory for health professions education. Each row condenses an internally contested, historically layered tradition; entries are entry points for engagement, not summaries, and are offered as hypotheses awaiting theorization by scholars formed within each tradition. Entry points refer to the reference list.

Tradition	Core pedagogical concepts	What it theorizes that the canonical HPE literature does not	Entry points
Islamic	talab al-ʿilm (knowledge-seeking as obligation); mulazama/suhba (prolonged attachment to a teacher); ijazah (relational credential, ideal-typical form); malaka (habitus)	Motivation grounded in ultimate concerns; relational entrustment with documented failure modes; formation of intellect, character, and practice as one process	(37–43)
Hindu	śravaṇa–manana–nididhyāsana (hearing–reflection–integration; Vedantic systematization); gurukula residence; dharma-aligned vocation	A reception–reflection–integration cycle whose soteriological aim marks an instructive ontological divergence; the teacher's formed life as curriculum	(44–46)
Confucian	junzi (exemplary person); ren (integrated humaneness); li (ritual propriety)	Non-separability of competence and character; assessment of formation through extended observation of conduct	(47–49)
Buddhist	karuṇā (compassion); sati (attention-with-recollection, imperfectly rendered “mindfulness”); sangha (monastic training community)	Compassion and attention as trainable capacities with explicit graduated pedagogies	(50–53)
Ubuntu	Personhood constituted through relation; communal generation and validation of knowledge (scope internally debated)	Learning and healing as properties of communities, not only of individuals	(54–56)