Perspectives concerning a field-based inquiry approach to medical education are offered. This approach requires that inquiry tactics more closely match educational and clinical processes. Assumptions about naturalistic and quasi-experimental educational research are considered that indicate a common field-based approach to inquiry. Parallel processes linking conceptions of medical education, clinical practice, and inquiry are also considered. It is concluded that understanding of social and educational phenomena has too long been determined by research and evaluation frameworks that define concepts of what is good and what is bad in medical education and that have limited those concepts. The processes of medical education and clinical practice are seen as complex, nonlinear social processes appropriate for applying a field-based inquiry approach. Most medical education research has been organized by constructs, typically psychological or behavioral, that are used to explain or predict certain patterns of human behavior. Rethinking of medical education inquiry is advocated, along with less reliance on the experimental design framework of scientific inquiry. (SW)